What were some of the most heated Giant Bomb GOTY discussions from previous years?

Been a GB member since its inception, but never really followed their GOTY talk except for this year, last year, and I listened to the GOTY podcast of Skyrim vs. Saints Row 3 (since Jeff likes to mention it a lot).

But other than that, what were the other heated podcasts (please provide links or dates), and it doesn't even have to be just the Top 10 Games listing, it could be for other categories.

Thanks for all your help duders.

Best DLC in 2010 makes the Skyrim vs Saints spat seem like an amiable chat.

idk if it was heated, but that year alex was skyped in while everyone else was in studio and was pleading to have hotline miami (i think) on the list is enjoyable just because of his sheer desperation and everyone being like dude let it go

and then alex is all like okay but what if we put it on the list please just put it on

and then brad is all like dude there's no way this is happening just stop

and then you can hear this faint hiss as alex's soul is aborted from his body and now he is the way that he is

you know the way that he is

I think a lot about that Shadow Broker/Minerva's Den debate. Makes me sad that DLC once inspired such heated emotions, but these days it's typically just kinda more of that game.

Best Add On, GOTY 2010.
BioShock 2 Minerva's Den vs. Mass Effect 2 Lair of the Shadow Broker. Brad and Vinny get serious.

I need to re-listen to that DLC argument from 2010. I remember actually kind of spacing out at the time because I have never played ME or Bioshock so I had no real reference for either of those things, but I remember it being a fairly long conversation.

Also, I may be wrong, but I think that there is always one Brad vs Jeff moment that is pretty long and serious each year except for 2012 and 2013.

Batman: Arkham Asylam vs Uncharted 2 got pretty intense in 2009 GOTY.

I found this year's "Most Disappointing" pretty exhausting.

anything brad is arguing for

zing pow

There isn't a goty heated discussion but I remember when brad first played plants vs zombies garden warfare and Jeff rode his ass over it. Brad was so pissed...it was about 2 years ago I think

Nothing will ever top Skyrim. I mean "It's really big".

@travisrex: Yeah, I generally find Jeff's rants on the Bombcast funny, but sometimes when he spars with Brad there's an uncomfortable edge to it that I don't like. I remember Brad describing CoD as boring left-trigger+right-trigger. I thought it was pretty funny, but Jeff got very exercised about it.

Usually in those discussions Jeff is all about mechanics & objective game play over other considerations, but his tendency to lapse into loudly insisting his subjective opinions are objectively true seems to push Brad's buttons.

Yeah the Skyrim vs Saints Row 3 discussion tops it. In no way though should SR3 ever win that battle.

@rebel_scum: Normally I'd agree but at the time the PS3 version of Skyrim was unplayable due to the memory leak issue. At the time I hoped SR3 would be GOTY. I also didn't like the fact that Brad just brushed away the issues with the PS3 version by saying 'yeah but it works on PC and 360'.

@professorreid: Batman should have totally won that. Even with how crazy awesome Uncharted 2 got at an unprecedented cinematic level, the flaws were just more obvious even then too. Asylum had only one notable problem and that was the mostly lackluster boss fights. Everything else was super tight and highly satisfying gameplay-wise with a surprisingly excellent degree of production value. Just about all of UC2's big moments can be deflated instantly if you fail to follow the strict scripting. And Jeff didn't even finish UC2 because of how much the last part infuriated him. I forget how UC2 even won that discussion. Probably because Brad fought for it LOL

I certainly recall Vinny backing Batman then, but he has just never really had the level of commitment that Brad always displays in these deliberations. Vinny's always the nice guy! So yeah, spoilers for the Skyrim/SR3, Batman/UC2, and Minerva's Den/Shadow Broker arguments :P

Skyrim vs Saints Row will always be infuriating to me.

I have to say this year felt more at each other than in years past, there was one moment where a bunch of people of talking over each other and Jeff just says "fucking listen to me!" and you just hear Alex quietly say "hey...". That was pretty uncomfortable

The original GOTY 2008 MGS4 vs GTA4 showdown was pretty heated from what I remember. Or maybe that just set the standard in my mind, being the first one, but I remember that feeling as intense as any since.

I haven't listened to that podcast, but I have heard it mentioned. What happened there? I assume it was somewhere from july - December 2013, as that is when I was barely consuming any GiantBomb content besides a couple quick looks.

Brothers vs Puppeteer (Proteus) (Day One 2013)

It was 2/25/2014.

I forget when it was, but I believe it was Brad who flat out admitted they screwed up looking back by picking UC2 over Arkham. The point he made was when you look back on that generation of gaming, Arkham Asylum was perhaps the most influential game that came out during that period. Even now so many new games are utilizing Batman combat.

IIRC, it was Ryan, not Brad, who won it for UC2 in the end by admitting Arkham had the better single player campaign, but argued that UC2's multiplayer was really good and that made it a more complete package. Which is weird to think about, because I know it's supposed to be okay, but I don't recall it being that memorable. Mind you, I love UC2.

The one I haven't heard mentioned was the infamous last couple spots for the 2013 list. Brad was fighting for Rogue Legacy, Patrick for Papers, Please, and Jeff for Divekick, when suddenly Brad proposed cutting I believe Stanley Parable and Super Mario 3D World. This was the singular time a game initially locked for top 10 ever ended up later removed, and you could tell Alex carried the grudge into the 2014 awards because they basically used the fact he wasn't present in the room against him there.

And of course there was Destiny...

@mercutio123: Yeah, that got a little too intense for a second there this year.

2010 DLC and 2011 GOTY are the best ones. Have to agree with Brad on Skyrim though. That game was without a doubt Game of the motherfucking Year.

Dark Souls is the real game of 2011. But no way in fuck in Saint's Row The Third better than Skyrim.

The cool thing about that debate is that, to this day, I still don't know which one I'd consider the winner.

As mentioned by everyone else, the biggest debate was probably between Brad and Vinny over Minerva's Den VS Lair of the Shadow Broker. That single conversation lasted for almost an hour.

Probably the most contested argument out of all of the years was probably Destiny making it on last year's Top 10 list. Although Jeff and Brad did manage to get it on the list, everybody else was saying "I don't think this is a good game", "The missions suck", "I got bored and stopped playing after I hit level 12". You can hear it in their voices. They were either so ambivalent, disappointed, or flat out thought it was a bad game and should not have been included. It felt like one of the few times where people were upset about a game winning something, compared to some other categories where people either accept it or say "Well, I've made my peace/I've made my case". I think some of the more heated arguments happen when there is something more to argue for, like when they switched to the ordered list of 10. (Compare this year's discussion to the 2008 discussion when it was more or less people deciding over MGS4 and GTA IV for the #1 spot)

Not to pick on him, but it feels like most of the biggest arguments happen when Brad feels strongly about something. Sometimes Jeff would be against something, but when he rants it is either funny or he gets it out of his system and everybody else just says "Ok, this is still winning though, right?" This can be mainly seen with the final Game of the Year discussions. Like Jeff was against Uncharted 2, Skyrim, and The Last of Us winning, but there wasn't an intense argument over any of those. (Maybe with Skyrim, but that was mainly because of the technical issues more than anything else. I think Jeff even said "I can't believe we're giving our Game of the Year to a broken game instead of one that works".) With Brad, it feels like he gets more riled up and persistent than everybody else.

Like with Destiny, that debate could be summarized as:

Brad: Destiny has to be on here. The way it plays is so great, it has to be on here.

Everyone Else: I stopped playing it. I finished the game and hated it. I don't have any fun playing that game. The loot sucks. The story is terrible.

Brad: Trust me, I know all of the problems with Destiny. If it just had more content, it would be Game of the Year.

Everyone Else: Well...No. It's not just the amount of content. What's there isn't good. Destiny is not a good game.

Brad: But it plays so well. <repeat for 20 minutes>

@shaunk: basically, brad tried the game and talked about enjoying it and Jeff just wasn't having it and belittling his opinion. Was probably the most uncomfortable dialogue I've heard between people on the podcast.

Ohhhh yeahhh

Was that when they argued over Brothers and Pupperteer for ages and then Proteus ended up winning it despite not being on the list to begin with? I remember laughing my ass off (and agreeing massively with the final decision because Proteus is damned hypnotic). It didn't compare to the Madeiras Den argument though, Brad got pretty nasty in that one.

Side note - Proteus needs to have VR support, holy fuck! I'd play that shit for hours

Like others have said, Skyrim vs Saints Row on the one hand, and Lair of the Shadow Broker vs Minerva's Den on the other immediately come to mind.

Also, to this day I still can't understand why people are so upset with the way Brad argues. It is a GOTY discussion, the point is to get the games you feel strongly about on the list. Brad isn't being a little child, he always comes with fair points why he wants it on the list. People seem mad that he sticks to his guns rather than roll over at the first sign of resistance from the other crew. Fuck that attitude. Go fight your battles Brad. There are people who see it for what it really is: a passionate defense for the games you love. At least Brad loves these games contrary to the other crew who regularly can't give a single fuck if something makes the list or not.

Brad is awesome, even if he incorrectly got Skyrim to win GotY in 2011. The passion he brings to those debates for the games he likes is more in line with the average fan than most would like to admit. People just ride him because he tends to use his powers for things like DotA and Destiny.

Also his point about how flawed the process by which Best Soundtrack category is decided was the most spot on bit from this year's podcasts.

Not really how I saw it. The argument was more over Brad's comment about shooters like Call of Duty. (Another "left-trigger, right-trigger")

Not a GOTY discussion, but shoutout to the talk between Brad & Jeff about Titanfall/Plants vs Zombies in one of the '14 bombcasts. That sounded like it was bridging on a real argument.

@spunkyhepanda: to be fair it's been almost 2 years since I heard it. I just remember jeff was naysaying everything brad was saying. But if you heard it more recently, I'd trust you.

@zevvion: Oh, I'm not saying Brad should stop the way he argues. I'm a sadist when it comes to the heated arguments actually! It's always way more interesting when people are legit debating and being passionate about the games they like. It's what I actually look for in these deliberations haha. I sorta wish more of the crew would be like him in that regard!

I love the heated arguments. At the end of the day the guys know none of it really matters and I doubt it ever has any effect on their relationships with each other. It's just fun to see how passionate people are about certain games.

I'm still salty over the whole Skyrim vs. Saints Row 3 thing. Saints Row got robbed. Don't get me wrong, I love Skyrim too but damn...

The DLC argument was legendary.

The problem that I have with Brad's arguments (and to a lesser extent Patrick when he was on GOTY discussions) is that they always came off as a bit whiny to me. When he doesn't get his way he keeps bitching about it until everyone else submits to him, but when someone else trys to do the same thing he's usually the first person to call them out on it. That's just not cool, and one of the reasons why it took them so long to decide best music this year, and why the whole Skyrim vs. Saints Row debate lasted like 2 hours or something crazy like that in 2011. Not trying to talk shit about Brad or anything but a lot of his arguments around GOTY just get on my damn nerves so much even when I agree with them. It just feels like everything grinds to a halt.

For anyone who wants to listen to the DLC argument from 2010 here's the podcast: http://www.giantbomb.com/podcasts/giant-bomb-game-of-the-year-2010-day-two/1600-198/, it's right at the beginning. On that note @jslack it looks like some of the old links are borked: http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/giant-bombs-game-of-the-year-2010-day-two/1100-2801/, if you go to that page then click on the deliberation podcast it doesn't redirect correctly.

Edit: Should note that the URL of the podcast doesn't matter past `/1600-198/`, so giantbomb.com/podcasts/asdf/1600-198 works. I'm going to assume you guys are using MySQL, so a query like `UPDATE articles SET content = REPLACE(content, '/podcast/1600-podcast_id=', '/podcasts/asdf/1600-');` should catch most cases, and if it doesn't, oh well because it's already screwed! Only thing that might be good to add is a WHERE statement for posts before the switch occurred.

I love the heated discussions and disagreements. Yes, none of this shit matters in the slightest. But by god, it shows a passion for video games! Which is the entire reason I use this website in the first place. Keep fighting the good fight, Brad, even when you're wrong.

It's absolutely the 2010 DLC fight. I listen to all the GotY podcasts every year and that's the one category that I'm sometimes tempted to skip over. Though now I might include this year's Most Disappointing. It's one of those times where people aren't quite arguing about the same thing they think the other person is arguing about, which is no doubt an effect of the way these have to be recorded in long stretches.

For those of you who were asking about Asylum vs. Uncharted 2, it was Jeff + Vinny vs. Ryan + Brad. In the end Jeff submitted; the line he gave was, "If you want the real answer, there are too many gargoyles in Batman - Uncharted 2 is your Game of the Year." I still do agree with their pick, but I also don't hold Asylum in as high regard as some people. I think it's super influential, but I thought the story was weak and it almost felt like a proof of concept - which I suppose it kinda was. Once they'd perfected the mechanics, which is what that game did so well, they were able to make it into a fully-fledged world with a phenomenal story, which is what City is for me (just don't tell Brad I said that :p).

@gravytrain: thanks for report, looking. Unfortunately, not as simple as changing something in mysql, but we'll figure something out.

Like many here, I got uncomfortable on occasion during some of these things, but hey--that's the point of GOTY discussions. The gloves are supposed to come off. How else are you going to get a bunch of people to "agree" (read: back down about their personal preferences) on a single verdict? Nobody would have watched the movie "12 Level-headed Men," I'm just sayin'.

I enjoy Brad and Jeff going at it--Brad really always brings the heat from a rational point of view, and Jeff's weird sophistry more or less summarizes my love for this website.

I always wish Dan and Alex would fight harder for what they feel strongly about. Alex because he always prefaces everything with "I won't win this, but..." and all his wit and insight is wasted... and Dan because he's clearly from another solar system and whenever he reveals more about the way his brain works, it is a marvelous spectacle.

Ultimately, I get more out of the GOTY debates than I do from anything else--entertainment, learning about things that weren't covered in depth, and just generally adding things to my "must play" list.

@jslack: Don't worry about it too much, just something I noticed. You can still easily Google and get the podcast, it's just that the article shows up first.

I prefer heated discussions when they are of reason and logic rather than blind burning love like someone has has for ungodly janky Bethesda games over the years. Listen to the Destiny one.

I am fucking hilarious at parties.

Just a double standard thing I see from fans.

Like how Dan is the worst for dismissing some stuff off hand when Jeff does it way more often and with way more vitriol.

Just compare it to how Mario Maker won this last year. I was surprised Brad didn't argue with it much at all given he, and several others, didn't even like the game much. Looking at the raw math list MGSV is far and away the GOTY for the site as a group.

It's an interesting dynamic. Some of the guys just don't care and or aren't made out for it. Jason in particular struck me that way this year because Witcher constantly would get crapped on, like a couple times it was said "no one even really likes it here or has it anywhere high on their list" and Jason would just quietly chime in "uhh... I do". It's really not a criticism of Jason it just shows how these worked. Listening to them put Mario Maker on top this year was the best example yet of how silly GOTY is and how no one should let it get them worked up (I say this as someone who got worked up this last year). And if people bury Brad for how he can argue and not that then yeah it's the double standard stuff I address at the start.

There's a million ways to pick it apart. I know Jeff had the "it's a way to have discussion about games" comments defending it but I just find a lot of it dumb and they could find better ways. The list at the end especially looks dumber by the year.

I love the GOTY discussions that become a really hard, exhausting knife fight. This year everyone kind of let things go far too easily. I want a 40 minute discussion of the ins and outs of MGSV even if it does seem like the consensus is with Mario Maker.

Minerva's Den vs The Mass Effect DLC is #1 all-time, easily I think.

Skyrim v Saints Row was genuinely kind of shocking, because Ryan surprisingly pulled his expected support for SR3 and just let Jeff and Brad battle it out.

Ryan was a goddamned turncoat on that one! You know Jeff still gets pissed about that since he brings it up a few times a year, every year since. I don't think he's gonna let that go anytime soon. It's kinda funny, and its also kinda funny how the site is still divided down the middle on the Saints Row-Skyrim split. I was listening to that for a bit last night after I read this thread because it reminded me of it and its still pretty good. Classic even!

The "Raw Math" breakdown seems to not work on other sites as well. I did a raw math breakdown on Gamespot out of curiosity based on their individual published Top Ten lists, and MGS V was safely ahead of everything else, but ended up third. Witcher 3, Bloodborne, and Rocket League were within a few points of each other. Witcher 3 was only in first on Danny's list. But since Gamespot doesn't publish their deliberations, there's no real good way to know why they settled on the order they did. I think IIRC Witcher might have been on a few more lists, so maybe that's why it won in the end. It's weird, because if you do a raw math breakdown here, MGS V had more "points" , but Mario Maker was preferred by 5 out of 8 staff members. So maybe the lesson is "raw math" doesn't work either.

I think the reality of it is, like all awards, they're kind of arbitrary in the end. If you want to see some real stupidity, look into the Oscars voting process. We get to see the inner workings of GB's deliberations, so it's almost easier to go after them even though their process might be pretty much how all of these work across the industry.

I think Jason's problem in deliberations is he knows he doesn't get to play nearly as many games as some of the others do, so he's a little hesitant to chime in. Drew is the same way. I think this year was the first time I saw him really pipe up near the end of the top 10 as I think him having Mario Maker over MGS V might have been what swayed the others a bit.

@cav829: Good post and I agree with pretty much all of it. I didn't mean to suggest they should use raw math but I just find the overall top 10 list for the site dumb more than anything. A game several staff members didn't even have on their list being 1st is just silly.

It's the part of GOTY that should go I think.

@gravytrain: FYI legacy link fix will be live by Thursday.