The Unofficial Giant Bomb Game of the Year Database

Look alive, friend! It's Game of the Year time! My favorite time!

In what has become something of a yearly tradition, I like to feed my anticipation for Giant Bomb's upcoming GOTY deliberations by taking jaunty waltz down memory lane and reliving the content of past years. Problem is, GOTY content isn't exactly collected in one place for easy access. If you know what you want, it's easy enough to find it through search, but I still found myself wishing there was just one big page with links to everything.

So I've made that! It's right here! I basically just did this for me, but I wanted to share it with the rest of the class too, because I'm sure I'm not the only one who will find *immense academic value* in this index!

Take a look below, and have fun! Happy GOTY, one and all!

(EDIT: after one of the site updates, GOTY 2014 and onward have archived versions of the main page and their content. You might prefer to use those! The year headers below will link to these pages, where applicable)

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

Whew, Duder!

That should do it. Please lemme know if I've missed anything, and I'll gladly add it to this post.

And, I dunno, anyone want to talk about their favorite moments of GOTY history? This seems like the place to do it! Lovers of the season, let us embrace! Happy festivities for all!

awesome, thanks!

Much appreciated, I'll check out some old favourites!

Thanks, I was going to get some work done today, oh well.

finding this stuff before was a pain, especially if you didn't know which day had the moment in your mind, let alone which year.

thanks!

You are a cool dude, buddy.

Thanks a lot duder! I was recently thinking about checking out some old GOTY videos so this really helps save me some time.

Thanks for doing this! I've been listening to the GotYs in reverse year order, currently at Day Five of 2010. I like to do that in December, really interests me to recall where we were at each year and compare.

I'm glad to have a giant list like this, been meaning to rewatch the 2012 GOTY videos. I miss you Ryan but your performances in Collect-SHUN and Hunk-a-dunk still make me smile.

You're awesome, man.

Ugh, Game of the Year stuff without Ryan is gonna hurt. :(

Fantastic work, good sir!

I kind of miss the dumb 2008 format with all the stupid awards. It feels more fun, and I don't take GOTY super seriously in the first place.

2011, the year Saints Row The Third was the REAL game of the year.

Just letting you know, for Vinny's GOTY 2012 list, you linked to his GOTY 2011 list instead.

This is good, important work. Nice.

This is really nice, thanks duder! Sorry to ask for even more, but it would be nice to see the recap articles that have stuff like the guest top 10 lists in them.

Oh man, this is great duder. I remember it being pretty tedious trying to find last years. Having one central hub for all of them is great.

@arkteck said:

Whoops. But I suppose I was bound to make a mistake like that sooner or later~

Thanks, duder! Should be fixed now. (Hopefully that was the only one!)

That's a good idea. I'll try and scrape through 'em when I get the chance. Thanks!

Cheers for compiling this list duder!

@l3illyl3ob: YOUR WILL BE DONE. The main post is full of articles now!

Anyone remember if there were any guest top tens before 2010? Also, more articles for 2008? None of my magic keywords were turning up anything, so I have no choice but to assume they don't exist. Yes. Definitely impossible.

That 2008 GOTY podcast was intense.

I think 2009 is the most fun of the series of podcasts.

Maybe I'll listen to all of these over again over some game that doesn't require audio.

Awesome post, thanks. In 2008 you're missing:

Game of the Year 2008: "Game" of the Year
Game of the Year 2008: Best Graphics
Game of the Year 2008: Best Multiplatform Game

You probably got bit by a bug in the Videos listing that sometimes shows items with identical release times in random order.

This is awesome. Thanks a lot! I still have fond memories over the MGS4 vs. GTA IV argument.

@jetlag: Thanks for catching that! I definitely did run into that bug, and after a couple of passes, I thought I got everything. Alas. But they're added now!

Guess I should add 2013's business. I'll either sit down and gather that stuff up soon, or... maybe when I inevitably bump this thread towards the end of this year, haha.

The prophecy came to pass!!

With GOTY time rolling around again, I'm in the mood to catch up on some old stuff -- and perhaps there are others who feel the same way? Here's the database again for whoever's convenience!

I crammed each year into its own little spoiler-block space this time. Yey or ney on that bold move?

@superkenon said:

Yey! Nice work, this is exceptionally cool.

I always wished I had something like this when looking for a grab bag of indie games from the last gen that i haven't had the chance to play. It really came in handy, thanks!

Very nice list! Unfortunately I do think it highlights the problem GB has always had as a relatively small (in terms of team size) website - they often don't have the capacity to put together a decent archive of their older material, leaving the community to do it for them.

Fantastic job. I really appreciate this. Also holy crap 2008 was a great year. With Burnout Paradise, Grand Theft Auto IV, Metal Gear Solid 4, Gears of War 2, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, Dead Space, Braid, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, and Fable 2, it makes this year seem even more pathetic then I realized. What happened? If it wasn't for the indies I would've almost played nothing this year.

This is awesome, props for rounding all of this stuff up! :)

Might want to double check the link on the "Giant Bomb's Game of the Year 2009, Day Four" article. It currently takes me right back to this page :P

Holy shit, this is amazing. Definitely bookmarking this thread. I don't know how 2012 will ever be topped though. Can't wait for this year!

@majormitch: Fixed! When I put this together last year, I was pretty much just copying and pasting URLs from other tabs like a goofus. A masterful technique which... lends itself to a couple of missteps now and again?

Thanks, duder!

@superkenon: So I have this page bookmarked and have used it a lot over the past year to look back on the GOTY content and I'm just gonna bump this so hopefully you can include this year's stuff aswell. Thanks!

@tournamentofhate: Glad you got use out of it!

I've updated the list to include the 2014 stuff too. Here's to 2015! (And to December, when I'll probably bump this beast yet again!)

@superkenon: Cheers!

This should be pinned.

Thanks for doing this, I was thinking of doing this myself recently. I'll bookmark this. 2013 was one of the better years for discussion because of the large amount of great games; that made me not enjoy 2014 that much. It was the complete opposite.

Look, I'm totally doing that! It's that time again, folksy folks! I even threw in a half-assed banner this time!

Time to get lost in the debates of yore. God, 2011 is so good. A fine vintage, I say!

Thanks a lot dude. I'm gonna bookmark this and dig through it when some stuff goes on sale, maybe pick some stuff up I missed.

Also, if you could please @jaketaylor when you update this for this year's GOTYs, I'd much appreciate it.

Getting my vote for most bookmarked post of the year. This is great. Lots of stuff to revisit.

Thanks for the effort, duder! :)

I've had this page bookmarked for a long time, it's been very convenient as I like to go back to this stuff from time to time. Can't wait for the upcoming 2015 addition!

@superkenon: I would like to thank you for taking care of all this. I love being able to google GB Game of the Year and finding this thread quickly and conviently every year when I listen to the podcasts and rewatch the videos from previous years. You are doing Gods work here and I can't thank you enough.

Thanks! Glad it's been useful!

Also, I didn't realize this thread would actually show up fast in a google search. That's fun!

But yeah, it's totally that time of year again, isn't it? This year I decided to mess with the format of the post a bit. Spoiler tags have their advantages in keeping things clean, but sometimes I just don't want to click things! So I'm trying it like this! Just a big ol' screen of links! Such breadth! I'll change it back or try something else if people find this to be annoying.

Yo duder top respects for the effort gone into making this!

@superkenon: Thank you for this :) <3

Nothing tops the 2014 skits for me, so awesome. Thanks so much for this list! It should be stickied or made more prominent around this time of year.

Hey! This thread needs the 2016 content in it. I look this thread up every now and then.