Game of the Year Spreadsheets!

Hey duders far and wide! So in the run-up to 2015's game of the year deliberations, I went back and listened to all the previous year's GotY podcasts. In the spirit of Big Data, I threw together some spreadsheets covering all the games everybody picked for their personal top ten lists, and the winners for the individual category awards (on the second page)

There is also an arbitrary scoring system to provide some sort of more-or-less meaningless metric. If a game was #10 on the list, it is awarded one point; #1 is worth ten points. For the adjusted score, I awarded a multiplier for each time the game was mentioned on somebody's list.

Anywho, with no further ado - hope you enjoy checking these out as much as I enjoyed making them!

2015 Game of the Year Awards (Work in Progress)

2014 Game of the Year Results

2013 Game of the Year Results

2012 Game of the Year Results

2011 Game of the Year Results

2010 Game of the Year Results

2009 Game of the Year Results

2008 Game of the Year Results

I was just hoping to review all this stuff today and viola! Thanks!

I love Big Data.

If you want one more thing to do - compile this into a top 10 games of the generation

@mechakirby: According to the Meaningless Metric Index, which is clearly indisputable, the top ten games during the lifetime of Giant Bomb are (**now edited to include the 2008 Top Ten lists):

Huh, that list seems surprisingly accurate (with maybe a couple of games moved up or down the list).

Thanks for putting all of this together. Especially for the 2008 awards. By now I've listened to all of the GOTY podcasts, but for some reason I just assumed they only gave out Game of the Year and didn't have any other categories for 2008. It's funny to look over those.

It's also kind of interesting to see how silly some of the original awards were and how more "serious" they have become over the years.

Jeff 2008: http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/jeff/blog/jeffs-top-10-of-2008/18455/

Vinny 2008: http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/vinny/blog/vinnys-top-ten-of-2008/18522/

Brad 2008: http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/brad/blog/brads-top-10-games-2008/18479/

Ryan 2008: http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/ryan/blog/ryans-top-10-games-of-2008/18454/

(Edit: by the way, why didn't you use COUNTA for the Points column as well? "11*COUNTA(scores) - SUM(scores)" for instance gives me the same numbers, but maybe Google Docs works differently to Excel here.)

@bdhurkett: Ah, fantastic! Thanks! I'll get these updated right away.

2008 was a great year for video games

So Fallout 3 made the site top ten, but zero of the individual lists? Interesting. And Vinny put HD Remix on his list? I didn't take him for a fighting game guy, though I do remember he was at least somewhat excited for 4.

Oh no, don't show this list to Jeff. It's missing a particular game of the generation...

Super Mario 3D World only made top 10 on Alex and Patrick's lists. What the hell was the staff thinking that year? No one had a WiiU?

Ha, wow, I'd forgotten 2012 had Syndicate in the overall top 10 list. Seeing that on there with Jeff as the only person to have listed it across the entire spreadsheet is really funny.

Red Dead Redemption.

@rwbladewing: Haha, yeah I thought that was great too. He fought haaaard for that game. Part of why I found his responses to Alex calling the new Assassin's Creed just 'Syndicate' on the last podcast utterly hilarious.

Cool read. Always enjoy data like this.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

Bingo! Jeff loves Red Dead.

Not the one I was thinking of, but Nuts & Bolts definitely belongs on there.

@freddiefiasco: It's game of the year, every year.

Random fact. Jeff actually picked GTA 4 and Metal Gear over Burnout in 2008, I guess he burned out on it.........

@tothenines: Funny how the shit that stays with us isn't always the shit we think will stay.

@tothenines: Jeff had Burnout at 2, Ryan is the one with MGS and GTA before it.

Middle-Earth was basically unanimous GOTY, to the extent that nearly half of the crew had it as their number one and all but two had it in the top five... has anyone even mentioned Middle-Earth this year?

(Also how the hell did Wolfenstein: The New Order not even get in the top ten and Advanced Warfare got in the top five?!)

@lackingsaint: I think Shadow of Mordor has been mentioned a couple times in 2015, and in general, seems that their collective memory of that game, if I recall correctly, is that it was the best game in an overall mediocre year for games.

I suspect GB's #1s look wrong in retrospect because, when they deliberate, they get mired in technical, "objective" standards as a way of coming to some form of agreement between immensely subjective individuals, and ultimately, that leads to an exclusion of the "human element" that makes for personally memorable gaming experiences. While I absolutely adore the buggy, unfinished mess that is KotOR II, I can't imagine it having reached the top of any collective GotY lists, because, looking at it in any objective sense would sanitize it of the special moments that make it so beloved in my memory. The bugs and missing content would then take the spotlight and give the ENEMY fodder for knocking it out of the top spot. Games don't work when analyzed objectively (shockingly enough).

tl;dr Giant Bomb does GotY right by treating it like the pretentious joke it really is. (Opposite of what the Keighleys did last night by giving out a fucking Lifetime Achievement Award like they think their awards actually mean something. Definition of pretention. You're not the fucking Oscars)

This just made me sad (again) that Patrick isn't going to be there for this years GOTY stuff.

@kiruvi: amazing work! way to go duder!

So does mean there are 10 games better then brothers?

@rwbladewing: That happened with Call of Duty last year, too.

Wow @ Dragon's Dogma almost being entirely snubbed. That is just wrong. The shutdown of Lord of the Rings Conquest is to be expected but damn was it fun online. When Greg gave EverQuest 1 GotY was that a dual goty with a console game or just the GotY 1999. Absolutely no one said TMNT Out of the Shadows. But it's awesome.

I'm still sour over the Skyrim vs. SR3 hissyfit

Awesome compilations, thanks a lot!

Sorry about hijacking the thread, but here is a spreadsheet of the top 10ish lists for every game critic I can find that put their name on it.

Game Critics Top 10s from 2008 - 2014

I was going to build a site to store the historical data to determine the real top game of the year. It was going to be awesome. I was going to use Dave's Webhooks to build it. Then apathy set in and here we are.

In the lists, I went with the first game if someone put in two games in one spot. And for those who did not order their list, i just gave it an order based on first one mentioned.

"Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor" - really ?? And no COD in the list? :o

Wow, Demon's Souls didn't even make the list in 2009 and Dark Souls one was mentioned once in 2011 by vinny at 7th Place. I was under the mistaken impression that they liked the souls games more than that. I guess I was completely off base.

Hopefully he'll get a guest top 10.

You should not have done this. Why? Because now the Bomb Crew might just use this method to shorten the decision making process and that means less podcast for us fans each year....

All joking aside, this is really cool. I've loved looking over this info and remembering some of the arguments that went into some of these decisions.

Keep up God's work!

@chekhonte: Well, most of them didn't play the game when it first came out. Patrick got into it late (he had only played for an hour or so when they finished Load our Last Souls), but now he's literally the Dark Souls Editor at Kotaku. Brad came to it similarly late, and Bloodborne is the first Souls game that Jeff didn't hate outright.

@kiruvi: thanks for the information. I've only been seriously following the gang for the past 1.5 years and I haven't caught up on the very old podcasts yet.

As someone who fucking haaaaaates the retroactive dislike that Mordor has gotten for whatever reason, I'm glad that game is placed so highly on this "pure numbers" list. That game is still fantastic and should stack up nicely on any list, being a weaker year like last year's or a pretty good year like 2015.

@kanerobot:I dunno, man. If Mordor had come out in 2013 or 2015, I don't think it'd make it to number one. It might very well make it to the top ten, but it only shined so bright because everything else was dull.

Cheers for putting all this together! Listening to all the GotY podcasts through in order is an ever-growing yearly ritual of mine. Started yesterday and I'm currently about to start the final 2009 episode, it's always great to revisit that stuff and think about how things have changed over the years.

No Stardust = No dice

Can you explain what "times mentioned" is and why it should have such a dramatic affect on the scoring tallies?

Thank you

-s

@s10129107: It's how many times the game was mentioned. I decided to use it as a mutiplier since a game one person ranked #1, but nobody else mentioned, would otherwise rank higher than a game nine people ranked at 10; basically I opted for ranking broad appeal over very specific appeal. As mentioned, it's incredibly arbitrary and largely meaningless, and is mostly an attempt to clumsily map the lists numerically.

These are cool and all, but we are forgetting what is really important. What did Dave's envelope say from that one year? Did they ever reveal it? For anyone who doesn't know I think it was for Game of the Year 2008, they were given an envelope from Dave that said to open in case they couldn't decide on an ultimate winner for GOTY. It was definitely referenced in at least the year following, but no one ever revealed what was inside.

It has to be STALKER Call of Pripyat, right? I think that was that year...

The work-in-progress version of the 2015 awards has been started, if anyone is interested in keeping track of the runners-up and such as we go!

The top-tens page is a bit of a mess, I'll get all the formatting done once everybody's picks are entered.

2015 Game of the Year Awards (Work in Progress)

Merry Game of the Year, everybody!

@kiruvi: Looks like we had the same idea. It really is fun to keep track of this stuff, for whatever dumb reason. :)