What new Game of the Year categories would you like GB to discuss this year?

It may sound a little early, but we are getting closer and closer to Giant Bomb's annual GOTY podcasts and deliberations. With the year we've had, I bet there's going to be plenty to talk about when they talk about awards such as Best Looking Game, Best Music, Best Surprise and on a more negative note, Hottest Mess. Though GB will usually do 1 off or entirely new awards as they did last year bringing in fun awards like Best Shopkeeper and awards that were planned to be kept long term like Best World (admittedly after everyone was frustrated about that award, I don't think Best World comes back). So the point of this thread is to offer any ideas as to what new award categories the GB crew could potentially bring up when they reach that time of the year. The award ideas can range to any sort of silly fun award that awards a game for something small (like Best Shopkeeper) or something that actually revolves on the games' gameplay or on the industry itself. Here are my 2 ideas as to what they can talk about and what would be the nominees:

• Best 2D Side Scroller: At one point I thought of this as Best Metroidvania since this year we had a lot of different Metroidvanias come out. However, the more I thought about it, the more I released GB as a whole is really into a small number of Metroidvanias that came out like Dead Cells (alright, that one is a VERY LITE Metroidvania) and The Messenger. Thought of doing 2D side scroller instead to include 2D platformers to compete with the Metroidvanias. The List:
  • Dead Cells
  • Celeste
  • Iconoclasts
  • The Messanger
  • Mega Man 11
  • Kirby Star Allies
  • Yoku's Island Express
  • Guacamelee 2
  • La Mulana 2
  • Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon
  • Death's Gambit
  • Dandara
  • Gris (If anyone at GB plays this before GOTY)
  • Unravel 2
  • Bomb Chicken
• Best Cell Phone: Brad jokingly talks about this on the last Bombcast, but I kind of want this award to be real. Here are the nominees:
  • BK's cell phone from Donut County
  • Theo's cell phone from Celeste
  • The Missing's cell phone
  • Jimmy T's cell phone from Warioware Gold
  • Uh, I imagine Detroit Become Human uses cell phones? Okay I can't think of any more at the moment.

• Best Remaster. We've already had a "Least necessary Remaster" category, but this year Burnout Paradise had a remaster so let's just get it out of the way here
• Best Spider-Man suit
• Most likely E3 gameplay trailer to be bullshit
• Best World, as in the actual gameworld your character is physically moving around in
• Best Worldbuilding, as in the lore and story and visual storytelling that establish a setting
• Best Dark Souls for the games that try to be Dark Souls, including but not limited to Death's Gambit, Dead Cells and Unworthy
• I think we actually have enough solid ones out this year to do a serious Best Fighting Game category, presented by the Ranking of Fighters research team

@redhotchilimist: Oh god. I'm having flashbacks. That 'Best World' category from last year was an absolute train wreck. If they do anything like that this year, they should take a page out of Bakalar's book and call it the 'Best Runnin' Around' category.

Austin Walker Presents: Bad Take that Made You the Most Sleepy.

Otherwise they've pretty much got it covered.

Best/Worst Character Creator/Customizer

I think "best world" is the only deliberation i've skipped since the site started.

To me the best categories are the goofy ones. The segment where they played bad covers in worst trend is one of my favorites. More stuff like that

Best Dragon Quest Enemy is my pick. I hope it would play out like the Best Capture in Mario Odyssey category, but no one has played the game besides Jeff.

Best Forza Horizon 4 Horn

Windows XP Shutdown is the front runner but there is a lot of good horns in there.

Best Goku in a fighting game.

They'll have to get creative to fill time this year, since Super Mario Party automatically wins GOTY and most of the other categories. Best Game That Isn't Mario Party, maybe?

I think this will be a hard to judge year.

Last year had some big games that flopped HARD. Moreover it was a year of super constraiovals stories/trend - Loot Boxes, Pay to Win, Where's The VR?,...just EA in general. This years I think we have a lot less hot button issues, and the buttons overall are less hot.

I think a category for this year's should be the "We Are Shocked They DID Dial It Back?" I can think of five things the Industry Dialed back more than I thought

• Loot Boxes still exist, but they dialed it back more than I thought they would as an industry
• King of the Hill/Battle Royal games did not flood the market, nore does it seems like they will from what people are making.
• Nintendo cut its losses on LABO - I thought we woudl see more ill-conceived LABO that was simply not going to work for kids, but I think Nintendo has cut way back on what they will do with it irf anything past 2018.
• Unnecessary remasters. In the last two years there were TOO MANY games being remade, and not many were needed. The slowdown on announcement has been nice even fi there are a few I woudl have liked to have seen that never came.
• EA...oh, they have not reformed but they are at least not as GLEEFUL about how they were robbing us. That was really what annoyed me about SW Battlefront 2....they were gleeful about how much money they would make and they let too much Investor discussion leak out about how gleeful investors should be. EA is still doing Loot boxes but they are being quieter...which is still bad...but at least the little dog yapping is quieter.

Best Hitman 2 kill

Best former moderator named Sparky_Buzzsaw.

Best debut studio.

Best newcomer or best new IP always includes stuff like Destiny, Horizon & The Last of Us; New series standing on the shoulders of the games that these teams made before.

Instead, why don't we celebrate the newcomers to the industry? Studio MDHR (Cuphead) & Team Cherry (Hollow Knight) made amazing games on their first try and now have to take on all these juggernauts of new IP that were made by teams of 100+ devs that shipped a bunch of games already.

Best PUBG Clone?

Okay, Best Battle Royale. If the trend gets really stupid, maybe also Worst Battle Royale.

@onemanarmyy: I like this idea! I was gonna say Motion Twin (Dead Cells) would win the award but they’ve developed browser games before so I’m not sure if they count. Personally I’d give shout out to would be Villa Gorilla (Yoku’s Island Express) and Dumb and Fat games (Wandersong).

Year of the ______

Remember when it was the year of the ice pick? Or the grappling hook? Or th--ohwaititsgonnabebattleroyalefuckit.

Best New Hitman Disguise

Most anticipated game of 2019

and best kiss

"Best" is probably the wrong the verbage for it, but some sort of Special Award for Outstanding Commitment to Healthy, Sustainable Labor Practices would be cool to see.

Best climbable penis.

Actually, I remembered something. A year and maybe even two years ago, I sent in e-mails asking the crew to rank their previous games of the years(and at one point, the runner ups, I think). But it's hard to find a good place to do that, 'cause the people that made all those decisions are usually split across coast. Brad, bless his heart, picked out both of those emails - but both times only a few people were around to discuss it. So if there is one place that does fit for Giant Bomb's GOTY of GOTY, it's gotta be sometime during GOTY talks, when everyone's gathered and ready to reminisce. It's just a dumb thing that I like, but I think it would be a very fun debate and a good way to celebrate a decade of Giant Bomb(and a good way to get old wounds out of the way before plunging into the debates for 2018). We've got ten contenders for the top 10 now. There's never been a better time.

For the record, the winners were:

While the ones that landed second place were:

Id love a separation between MP and singleplayer awards again, PUBG winning made sense, but left artistic achievements by the wayside. In a year with God of War and Red Dead 2, i fear for narrative recognition. More like I fear things like Abby dying in battle for Dream Daddy, Alex crying that nobody liked Neir as much as he did, and everyone feeling robbed in the end. Not talking shit here haha everyone gets passionate about their games! More chances to recognize niche elements leads to people feeling better that their piece was heard. and pleas,e no more best world

538 has a "Best Articles We Wish We Wrote" award. I could see something similar for GB. There's too much out there for one site to cover, but maybe GB could tip their cap to recognize their peers.

This could probably be phrased better, but a "Get out of Your Own Way" award? A lot of games seem to have really cool ideas or are almost really good, but are severely hampered by their own lack of ambition, refusal to fix certain problems, etc. Alex and Ben have criticized AC: Odyssey for just having too much fluff, Dan and Alex have both talked about how amazing a wrapper WWE 2K19 is around a terrible game, and recent reviews of Starlink have emphasized how enjoyable the gameplay is, but how that's dragged down by boring and uninspired world/mission design. I think talking about games that could have been amazing is just as important as talking about games that actually are amazing.

I just want to see what Brad digs the trenches for this year.

Man, I don't know if I'd like for them to add any, if anything they should scale back.

The whole process...both from my observation and random comments made by the crew it seems like a miserable affair all around, especially with the ungodly length they put into the proceedings which honestly have little importance outside the community's enjoyment and clicks generated by those that will argue about it all the weeks following. I'd much rather have more video content of both crews kicking back than them all being crammed in that tiny room for 20-25 hours worth of podcasts. Seriously at some point during those things, I'd be all like "eff this" and go stream something in the studio.

At least I would have before they got rid of the couch.