How did unfinished games go from "Please Stop" to "GOTY"?

A programm is really never finished, it is an ever ongoing process as judged by the developers in charge of it.

Unfinished as a term would imply that a game is not yet reached 1.0 (or base game) by the developers vision alone. That means that the game is out for public consumption and should be scrutinized as part of consumer advocacy.

Its nothing but logical that this means that unfinished games should also count for any GOTY discussion. And thats only part of the whole deal. What if I tell you that everything literally released is still in testing? What if a Alpha/Beta/rc status is with only a few rules set in place an entirely arbitrary thing?

By the end, what does 1.0, 21.50 or 420.69 even mean? They're nothing by arbitrary numbers given by the dev, or the one in charge labeling them. Firefox, Chrome, the entirely of all the Open Source Software will still and always be in continuous development. Furthermore, stuff that might be finished already isn't done still.

What if a game is considered finished, yet full of critical bugs? What if those bugs only appear on modern hardware but are related to the software? Games are a long-term investment after all and we're seeing it with all those newer updates for older games popping up adding new language, or even do-it-yourself translation options. There you can see that the devs notice trends but for this specific subject it signifies that these unfinished games are taken seriously now.

A game is never done and the situation always changes. So must the devs, consumer advocacy sites like Giant Bomb and potential consumers. At any case, with transparency and development of culture regarding Open Source Software and Indie Game Development, games and their culture are an ever developed process for all to see. So if Giant Bomb finally treats games such as PUBG as a "full" thing to sit amongst other GOTY candidates then they're just adapting to this new development.

I mean the game was sufficiently featured at its early access launch to grow into a national phenomenon, so I'm going to guess that's why nobody is complaining.

I can see the point the OP makes. PUBG being eligible for GOTY is flimsy at best since it was just realeased today. It really feels like they rushed to make it 1.0 in 2017 so it can be sold as a GOTY next year so it’s almost all a marketing thing which is super lame. This entire year it’s been out it’s been broken, cheat ridden (even now), very lean on content and laggy (again even now). I personally think it’s a bad idea that they would overlook all these flaws and have it win GOTY.

Other games have been trashed because they had half the flaws this game had and still has. No Man Sky is like the perfect opposite of this. That game had soo much pre release hype that it could never live up to expectations. It never could have been a surprise like PUBG is. It’s a damn shame that because of that whole debacle it’s almost completely ignored even when they have been releasing updates to it this whole time. At a faster rate than what PUBG has been releasing. If that game was released last year under early access would it be as vilified as it is now? We will never know.

I lost faith in GOTY votings when Overwatch beat DOOM (2016) in 2016. Multiplayer game of the year? Sure, i can see that. But overall, a multiplayer only game that requires a constant internet connection shouldn't win the award for GOTY, especially when it should be worth about $25

@wetracoon I think what @timberbarrackk and @fatalbanana are trying to demonstrate to you is something like the difference between PUBG, which is clearly an early access game, and Fortnite which is an early access game sold at retail under the guise of being a proper product. PUBG is labelled up and down as an early access game--meaning people are signing up (monetarily) to play it before it's ready for market, knowing that it's not ready for market. It has microtransactions, but microtransactions are entirely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Fortnite presents itself as a game that's passed the quality check to be a Boxed Retail Game, whatever that means anymore. People who buy Fortnite might come home to find out that game's busted in some real janky ways, as it's not done and is actively being worked on. That is the difference in expectation they're trying to get across. And that's without reiterating their point about games like No Man's Sky where the product was released in a state where if you don't download the Day One patch, you get a drastically worse experience because what was sold to you is below the standards of the almighty Boxed Retail Game, without any kind of marketing to inform people that.

If you want to argue the semantics of "Early Access", then feel free. You seem to think it just means a game close to ready for release, when people like the GB staff have lamented many times about how nebulous a term it is. Early Access means you're getting early access, and the developer is the one determining how far along they should be before they post it. It could be a side-scrolling platformer with only one screen completed and it would fit under Early Access--however, a game like that would face the same criticism No Man's Sky got because that game would be under-delivering on the expectations for Early Access, the same as No Man's Sky burned people expecting a certain quality. Just because PUBG's "full final price" is $30 doesn't mean expectations for it should be the same as a AAA game costing the traditional full final price of $60, just because they both cost "full price". I don't judge A Hat in Time on the same level of expectation that I do Mario Odyssey. That said, if PUBG remains janky as fuck when it leaves Early Access and hits 1.0, then it should be held to the same standards other final products in its class are.

Why let a decimal or whole number tell you when you can enjoy a game :D

@craigieh28: On a previous podcast Jeff has said explicitly that PUBG is in the running for GOTY because it has a December 20 release date. They REALLY want that game on their list considering they were willing to argue for it on faith that 1.0 release would happen exactly when the devs said it would, essentially “bending the rules” for it to make an appearance. For my money, I’m convinced it’ll take #1 handily, but we’ll see next week after 25 hours of knife-pulling.

Sim City wasn’t advertized as an alpha, that’s a pretty gigantic dfference.

I do not claim to be speaking for anyone else, but I can forgive and overlook busted games if the thing they are doing is truly great. Perhaps that great thing directly resulted in the game being busted and it wouldn't be possible otherwise, and perhaps not. I can't know, I am not a developer and if I were, that wouldn't mean I automatically understand how all games work and what is required to make them work.

I am not into PUBG, but I can completely understand why people would nominate it their GOTY.

This is the part where I just have to just type "shrug". A lot of the other folks have pretty much expressed what I feel about this. While this game will continue to make improvements over time I feel like the early access distinction does help set expectations from people and one could make an argument that those other games mentioned by the OP (Simcity, No Man's Sky) should have went that route, the expectations for said games and the way they were marketed prior to being released really did not help at all. Battlegrounds was not beholden to those expectations neither were other (at one point) early access games like Dead by Deadlight, The Forest, etc.

Also...

Yup.

@torrim: I agree, but I also think the point of this post is more that critics seem to be selective with how much they care about a game's supposed "jank." Fallout 4 was ripped to shreds during GotY talks because of its open-world "jank," but PUBG seems to just be getting a slap on the wrist from many people for similar (or, in some cases, more grievous) sins.

@oursin_360: PUBG is an unfinished retail game. I think a lot of people haven't remembered that its just left early access and its still an unfinished mess AFTER its release date. I doubt it will actually be significantly polished and 'complete' until at least 2019.

@disco_drew22: I have a long idea of what constitutes good jank versus bad jank and it's a weird ramble, but I think the core of it looks at how can the worst-case scenario of it affect your game. In Fallout 4, if there is a bug in a quest it is possible you would need to restart the entire game's story from scratch, which is egregious. In PUBG, a game crash may take you out of the tension you get from being in the top 10, but it's so easy to get back into the "loop" of the game that it is easier to forgive it. Though I have a friend whose computer can't run PUBG reliably (though, ironically, it also can't run Fallout 4 without crashing) so their opinion of the game is negative.

I think that jank can also go in the other direction, but both games benefit from the engine "misbehaving" and producing some outrageously enjoyable situations. Deathclaws flying, cars on fire, people clipping in out of nowhere. It's only when these bugs wrest control of your experience and what you want to accomplish in the game do people start criticizing.

Pubg is a hot mess every time i try to play it's either a server problem or something else dumb going on. I played a lot of the Battleroyal arma II mod in the day, i really like the mode but that thing is to buggy to go out and say he look 1.0 is here !

@platypon: Wait, are you talking about GB ranks my Overwatch above Doom, because Doom beat Overwatch in GB’s top 10. Doom was #2 and Overwatch was #3. If you’re talking about gaming outlets in general, then I sort of see where you’re coming from.

As for PUBG, I don’t have the technology to play it so I have no opinion on how it plays myself. However, the reason why it’s a strong GOTY contender is because the core gameplay has caught the GB crew by storm (and many other people too). There’s no denying that the gameplay has gotten so many people hooked to have them survive just to win an artificial chicken dinner. Certainly the game was and still isn’t perfect according to people complaining about the servers and cheaters getting in the way. However, it didn’t become the best selling game of 2017 for no reason. Seems like it’s one of the few games where people can somewhat forgive its technical flaws because they find the core game itself that amusing and worth going back to. Hot Mess Games like SimCity (2013) didn’t seem to have that addicting core gameplay to spark a phenomenon despite its cons. In fact in SimCity’s case, the problems overshadowed the gameplay for most people. PUBG isn’t flawless, but it managed to create a phenomenon. Again, I never played PUBG, but only acknowledging its success.

Well version 1.0 is out and didn't magically fix all the problems the game has, so at least the GOTY arguments will still be accurate when discussing it. Also really solidifies how worthless a descriptor "Early Access" is when talking about this game because they're obviously going to keep updating it the same way they have been, so the crew really did make the right decision about including it this year.

If Early Access really didn't mean a thing, then gaming outlets would have reviewed the game during its Early Access period, just like they do with any "finished" game. No one doubted for a split second whether they should review Battlefront II or Mass Effect Andromeda or give them a few months to get better... but somehow the Early Access tag made PUBG immune to any "pre-release" criticism in the form of a review or purchase recommendation.

Let me ask you something: how do you think that a game like Mass Effect Andromeda would have been initially received if it had launched on Early Access? Do you think it's animation issues and boring sidequest design would have been waived away like PUBG's problems were? And don't tell me that "PUBG is fun!", as if that was an excuse for its real, objective issues. Any game can be fun or a chore and that's completely subjective. Frame rate issues, crashes, bad UI, rampant cheaters, bad monetization schemes... all those are objetive negative points.

Come on, let's be honest. "Early Access" is a free pass for bugs, crashes and poor performance, since everything's gonna get fixed by the real release, right? It only "doesn't mean anything" when you have to give a game an award or tear a new one on a major AAA release that shipped buggy.

I'm 99% sure that PUBG is going to be Giant Bomb's GOTY and that breaks my heart. It's not even a matter of having the game I want win GB's GOTY. It's won plenty already, so not getting one or two isn't any issue at all :P It's just that my perception of Giant Bomb as an outlet in which I can trust is about to be shattered. As OP said, in previous years the "Please Stop!" award was given to broken-ass games. And yet, in a year full of amazing, polished games that pushed the medium forward in many different directions (narrative, visuals, gameplay), giving the website's most important recognition to a game that is fun completely despite itself is the worst outcome possible, seeing how pervasive broken games filled with microtransactions are these days. I still hold a tiny bit of hope that any other game snatches the award, but that hopes fades a bit more every day...

@mocbucket62: The counterargument for me against PUBG is that all the "phenomenon" and sales was network effect and had nothing really to do with the game itself. PUBG owes it success more to Twitch and Youtube than anything else. It's the Pac Man fever of our time.

Some of the disappointment people are feeling if PUBG wins GB's GOTY is the same as when Mario Maker won. Would that game have been so highly regarded by the team if not for their captive audience? The average player isn't streaming their wacky PUBG hijinks out to an army of fans, and that's a large part of the charm to the game.

The thread ended here.

@gundamguru: You're not wrong. Looking at it, a large part of PUBG's success came from plenty of people Twitch streaming the game and that encouraged people to buy it get into those matches that are being streamed. Some of which are getting into PUBG eSports and those events are being streamed too.

@joey_ravn: I mean, I also think PUBG will end up being GB's #1 game, but I can give you some hope in how it might get topped. In the past 3 years I've noticed that around pre-GOTY deliberations, the community has championed one game as THE GAME that they believe GB will name "Best Game" during their deliberations. However, the actual winner was something else.

• 2014:
  • Community Favorite:Bayonetta 2
  • Actual "Best Game" Winner:Shadow of Mordor
• 2015:
  • Community Favorite:Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain
  • Actual "Best Game" Winner:Super Mario Maker
• 2016:
  • Community Favorite:DOOM
  • Actual "Best Game" Winner:Hitman

    PUBG right now is getting that Community Favorite vibe to it where many members (myself included) think it will win the "Best Game" award. However, there might be a chance it ends up being something else considering GB has went against what the community thinks will win their award. Also, apparently the day 5 podcast is over 6 hours, so that makes me think that there's going to be a heated discussion for which game gets the top spot. Maybe the actual winner will be Mario? Nier? It won't be BOTW since I think Jeff's complaints will keep that from winning.

You are making too many assumptions. Not a guarantee that its going to win, just that it probably deserved a spot in the crew's eyes. Plus, just because it has things that you or I or other people would perceive to be objective problems, does that automatically disqualify it? I don't think this would even be a discussion if the game itself was actually terrible but its not a terrible game. Flawed for sure but people are having a lot of fun with it and yes there are problems but games like Fallout 4 for example had a lot of issues but people still really enjoyed it. I don't think the fact that its early access also made the crew think of giving the problems it has a pass considering that they are enjoying it. If it was not fun for them at all, then they wouldn't even consider it.

@gaspower: Fallout 4 was destroyed in the GOTY deliberations for having bad system issues and they liked the core game. Wasn’t it on the biggest mess list? It’s feels like the PUBG issues have always been hand waved because of the early access get out of jail free card.

GB's Game of the Year has always been the game that has allowed them to produce the most content for the site. This has been true for the past 2 years with Mario Maker and Hitman. I wouldn't be shocked if PUBG continues this trend. Regardless on how unfinished it is.

If they went on this metric, Yakuza 0 might be their GotY.

Which would be correct.

@acidbrandon18 said:

That would be my bet too.

Anyway, my original rant was really about the importance of "broken-ness" or "messy-ness" of games.

Sure, "early access" sets the tone much better than a retail disc-based release. But what I am getting at was: no matter how "broken, messy, janky" a game is, as long as it entertains people, then people won't use "broken-ness" against the game. The Polygon 10/10 review illustrates this point well.

Furthermore, both Simcity and No Man's Sky were eventually better, but they weren't given PUBG kind of passes. Not because the lack of "early access" tags, but their inability to hold game reviewers for months afterwards.

There is a saying:

"Every startup has reasons both to invest and not to invest. If investors think you're a winner they focus on the former, and if not they focus on the latter."

Turn that into game reviews:

"Every game has reasons both to play and not to play. If reviewers think the game's a winner they focus on the former, and if not they focus on the latter."

That was my point.

The Game of the Year will always be the game with which the crew had the most fun. That is probably PUBG. Nothing else matters. The fact that some of you were looking for a hard ethical line on glitches in games is disheartening. There's room for more nuance than that.

If the jank is bad, it ruins the experience for people and removes the fun--that is why Fallout 4 and the like have been ripped on this site. It the jank is good and adds to the mayhem in a positive way, then it benefits the game. We've seen this with Hitman and again, probably PUBG. It doesn't matter if the game has jank or not, or whether that jank is attributed to it being in Early Access. I think some folks are forgetting that there is no objective metric of a game's quality. It's all in the fun.

E: I've also seen people refer to PUBG as a "full-price" game and just... what? For starters, there's no maximum amount of money that can be charged for a game. "Full price" is an illusory concept. Even if it weren't, the consensus for full price would be $60 in the U.S., which PUBG does not cost. Honestly, I'm surprised they didn't bump the price for 1.0 like Fire Pro plans on doing.

@darlingdixieI was being mean there but I was hoping it would encourage you to set out your argument for why its not broken. So far I've only got that you are upset that I said it was bad and now you are upset that I was mean and listed my reasons for why its a mess.

No, it didn't end up on the biggest mess list nor was it a runner up (rechecked the text article for it and Arkham Knight was the hottest mess). I remember the talk about the game and Austin was the one who liked the game the most but I think he ended up choosing Invisible, Inc. as his pick to make it into the top 10. There was a lot of talk about the problems of the game and it was partially due to the game being the third or fourth one Bethesda has made on that engine and it still had all kinds of problems that affected it like it did in past games (Skyrim, Fallout 3, etc.) and Jeff I remember saying that he was somewhat disappointed that they couldn't minimize those issues after years of working on that engine, etc. I'm just paraphrasing but I remember that the core argument somewhat laid on that premise. I feel like re-listening to that will make it more clear.

Sure, you can say that the early access moniker makes it easy to give it a free pass but I think if it the crew's experiences really were hampered by the issues (and we'll know for sure if that's the case during the deliberations) then we'll probably know where it ends up on the list. I personally feel like people are making assumptions over something that we don't even know the result of but are already assuming that is what already happened. We'll know by next week. I personally feel like it might not be the Best Game they end up choosing considering that there are some games that a number of people on the crew are super passionate about making it into top 5.

I do think you are right that there has been an overarching narrative that the community vote and the actual site GOTY usual don't line up. However I don't think, on the surface, that is the case this year. I feel like those of us who predict PUBG to be game of the year are the ones who have actively been paying attention to the real narrative behind GB selections for Game of the Year. 2014 was kind of a blank year, so that one is always a tough pick since it comes down more so to what the guys on the site have been playing. But in the case of last year, if you didn't think it was going to be Hitman you were crazy. The year before that? Same thing with Mario Maker. I feel like if everyone on the site is playing or getting involved in a game and releasing content with it, it's usually a good indicator that it had the biggest reach among the majority of all staff.

In that vein, I feel that is why PUBG is being predicted. Was played on the site for what, half a year, and still gets played? While not everyone on the site I think loves it, the reality is they are probably all going to hardcore champion their own games on their top 10 lists, which I think will lead to a situation where PUBG a game likely in everyones top 3 or top 5 (mabye not Abby, she didn't seem as big on it) will end up being the one everyone can agree on as 1. Because they all mostly liked it and played it. A lot of the other top games are more divisive I feel among the staff.

As for an answer to an OP question. I mean yeah sure PUBG is fun and those other broken games you reference weren't as much so. But I just think another part of it is about expectations. When a $60 full release title comes out, and is marketed as a completed project and is absolutely not finished. You have a right to be outraged. But we all know how hard games are to make, it's not like we would be faulting big AAA studios for delays. Crazy fans do I guess, but realistically if they want to charge for a full product they need to release it done. So in that case Early Access does make all the difference, but so does the price. You go into something like PUBG knowing it's not complete, and part of it's charm for a lot of people was watching it develop into a big deal, something people had an inkling it would be the more they played it.

If anything I think PUBG stands as a perfect example of the online early access model working successfully. You let your early user base enjoy your game as you make it, finish it, tweak it, and your also building word of mouth and hype from all that as well, not to mention the stream situation. And then by the time your game fully releases, sure you may not get some of your audience, as of course they've all been playing early access. But the word of mouth at that point is so big that people who hadn't tried it are more likely to.

Game of the year lists don’t matter, and people can have different opinions. Early Access lets the customer know that a game is in a state of continuous repair, where as games that are released broken can be considered disingenuous and poor consumer practice.

Also games as a medium is ever changing. What once seemed awful, in a few years can become a blessing. Rainbow Six Seige or even No Mans Sky, are great examples of how games can go from a mess, to fixed via updates into a game with a following.

Everything is reletive, and to reiterate game of the year list are a silly goofy thing that people shouldn’t take seriously. I hated Persona 5, Neir did nothing for me, and I thought Breath of the Wild was boring, but I don’t care if they are declared the greatest games of all time. It’s just video games, and this shit doesn’t matter.

I would imagine it is because we are all human, thus not stuck to one solid form of thinking? Our opinions change over time and maybe this was one of them? Or maybe that original "please stop" award was more for jokes than it was for real?

:shrug:

@df:IMO, PUBG shouldn't be anywhere near a GOTY list, but there are major differences (and the 2016 PLEASE STOP winner isn't relevant because it's specifically "Shipping Unfinished Games on Disc" -- with the disc, there is a presumption that you can put in it and play, rather than disc+download enormous patch):

• PUBG is sold as unfinished, whereas SimCity and No Man's Sky were sold as completed products. There is a reasonable expectation that PUBG will continue to improve and that features will initially be missing (as least there was before 1.0 was declared), whereas Simcity 2013 and NMS were sold as a complete bill of goods with no promise of further work.
• PUBG is fun (at least to many - personally I'm not a huge fan) despite its limited and janky state; SimCity and NMS had issues that made them disappointing even though they ostensibly had their full feature sets.
• PUBG is upfront about what you are getting - it's an early version of a game that'll probably turn into something better. NMS, on the other hand, promised the stars and barely hit the moon, and SimCity was built on the expectations and premise of the series to which it failed to live up.
• PUBG isn't broken, per se. It's janky and buggy, but for the most part it's possible to play as intended. SimCity was broken (server issues made it impossible for many to play; features were disabled in an effort to make the game playable), and NMS promised features that weren't there.

It's fine to like neither of these practices (I think the state in which the Xbox version of PUBG launched is inexcusable, and should not have been sold), but they aren't really the same situation. If PUBG is still buggy or incomplete post-1.0, then the situations become more comparable (though it still, AFAIK, isn't broken nor promising features that don't exist).

Edit:

It didn't, at least on this site's list (1. Hitman, 2. Doom, 3. Overwatch). But why shouldn't an online-only multiplayer game win GOTY? It's entirely possibly to imagine a scenario where it is the Best Game to come out that year, so it feels weird to put a bunch of arbitrary restrictions on it.

ftr it seems the 1.0 launch for pubg made the servers almost usable for a lot people on pc.

In saying that I still think its close to #1 if not #1

Which isnt exactly the point being made in the OP but ill be still kinda frustrated if so much issues of the game get thrown under the rug in deliberations.

Its all about fun!

PUBG as the best debut and I am just left with 1 feeling: LOL.

If PUBG's impact is the reason it won: Lootbox should have killed this category.

I couldn’t agree more with OP. There is some seriously slimy hypocrisy in naming PUBG goty and no real justification for backpedaling other than “Well we had fun together, it got a lot of views”. I can see why it’d win for best multiplayer but no idea why such a broken unfinished mess of a game would get the editors endorsement. It’s a shitty arma asset flip of a mod of a mod that was a hot trend that continues to be broken. lol such a garbage fire year for Giant Bomb goty

I don't think it should have been in the deliberations at all, to be honest. They had a rule(No early-access games), and agreed that the rule should not be broken, but rather removed the following year. PUBG didn't come out before the deliberations, and they had no guarantee it would. Release dates being pushed back are nothing new. Not only that, but they didn't have any experience with the released product, which was going to have a whole new mechanic added to it (vaulting); there was no way to really know whether that would be an improvement or a detriment. Ultimately, any arguments made for the game were based on their respective experiences with the incomplete product. They didn't technically break the rule, but it sure as hell feels like they did, and in my eyes it kind of cheapens the whole process a bit. All of this being said:

Player Unknowns Battlegrounds is the game of 2017. It just is; it doesn't matter how you feel about it. I actively dislike it, but there isn't much of an argument against the sentiment. I don't think it had any place in the deliberations, but after they decided to include it anyway, it was the clear choice for the same reason Skyrim was in 2011. I don't necessarily buy what Jeff has been saying about it being the next Modern Warfare, determining where shooters are going for the foreseeable future, but whether this games impact lasts for several more years or only several more months is immaterial to the category in question.

I bought PUBG in April. I don't generally like shooters. I never had any desire to play Arma (or whatever game had this game as a mod prior).

I never once felt, while playing PUBG, that it was "broken". It was in early access (and clearly advertised as such). It was janky. It was only $30. And it was INCREDIBLY ENJOYABLE.

I'm pretty sure, at some base level, that's the entire point of video games.