Giant Bombcast Game of the Year 2017: Best Game

"It's about sick orb dunks" is a pretty strong argument....

Dream Daddy is not even the top 3 VN to come out this year.

@chaser324: I wouldnt be interested in debating a topic if I had no ground to stand on either.

Yes but you are discounting criticisms purely on the basis that you "think" they are are sexists. Something you have absolutely zero basis for.

@chaser324: You cast suspicion on everyone (myself included) who has made any criticism of Abby during these deliberations. That bad smell is on all of us now because of your statement.

Even though it's the one I have the least interest in playing, I'm fine with Dream Daddy getting the #10 spot. There's a pretty long tradition of someone getting their pet #1 game somewhere on the list as a consolation prize; see, original Destiny and Invisible Inc.

It's Destiny 2, Tekken 7.and PUBG that are problematic to me. Tekken 7 is the best of the three, and in most years I'd be fine with it on the list, but there are such better games out there that aren't. More importantly, there are better games that are on multiple staff members' personal lists (and this is GB's GOTY, not the world's GOTY); where is Assassin's Creed Origins? Or Steamworld Dig 2? I'd be very interested in seeing a breakdown of the averaged game ranking from the personal lists and see how it compares to this list.

Too many of the crew liked Destiny 2 and PUBG for them to miss the list, so that I just have to chalk up to my having different tastes. But PUBG in particular is disappointing to me.

Yeah, I feel like if Dream Daddy had been a Japanese game with a very similar premise, story, and characters, it wouldn't have even been covered. I love VNs but it feels like a lot of their praise for Dream Daddy is founded on ignorance of VNs.

I am a very logical and objective person who gives a shit about what games make it on to an arbitrary list AND IM REALLY ANGRY FOR SOME REASON GRRRRR

@xenocrat: @namoo: I'm not disregarding any feedback or accusing any specific people of being sexist. A lot of the feedback is valid. Anyone that's only been in a given industry for six months is of course still going to have a lot to learn.

I was primarily commenting on the trend that has formed over the course of this year of Abby getting a disproportionate amount of criticism, often for things that men at Giant Bomb and elsewhere in the industry do with little to no flak.

Honestly, the degree of seriousness that people approach these proceedings with in general is extremely over the top. These are arbitrary lists that a group of people agree on for arbitrary reasons - not something that carries nearly the gravitas that some think it does.

I'm glad for Dream Daddy. If anything, so Visual Novels are not seen as this "out of bounds" genre. There's so much stuff that it can only be interesting because of the format. So many stories that delve deeper.

There's another step to take from there still. DD got noticed because it was more of a western style and folks where able to leave some of that "anime" hang ups behind. In the words of the argument presented for it, "don't judge the book for its cover and you'll find more".

@sethmode: the problem is, a lot of times when she did try to make good points, they were wrong. Saying Nier has a generic JRPG soundtrack or the Hell Blade is offensive about mental health issues because of some article she heard someone talking about which she has "read a little of" is disingenuous and a little insulting honestly

For the record, no one irked me quite as much as Brad did during this years deliberations, and I thought Ben did a really good job at points articulately expressing his thoughts. And I enjoyed listening to all of the debates regardless

Almost five hours, huh? I'm guessing three of those hours are arguing about Zelda vs Nier

"Why? Please tell me why. Please elaborate on why."

That's pretty much what went through my head every time I heard phrases like "I think it's very good."

I don't care which game you argue for, as long you actually make and argument for it. I want to know why and what makes something good. I can't care at all about that something is good, unless I know why it is.

Please, elaborate more.

It was really predictable when they started bending the rules for one game alone. It was an early access game when they made these podcasts. None had played the official release. They should have dismissed PUBG for the same reason they did Fire Pro, which also got a release this year.

Honestly this has been one of the best years in gaming and looking at this list sure makes it seem like just about any other year.

@cornfed40: I am not that far yet. I was not trying to say Abby only makes good points, I was just specifically calling out the negative responses from the Dream Daddy section.

@sethmode: fair enough, haven't listened to much of today's cast yet. My examples were from previous days where her arguments have really rubbed me the wrong way a couple of times. But whatever, no one is going to agree with everyone all the time no matter what the discussion is

I think it's just as reasonable to say that Abby can have issues, at times, articulating exactly what she likes about something as it is to say that Dan can be incredibly reductive and dismissive in some of his arguments.

P.S. They're both great and I love them to death.

P.S.S. It's just a dumb list, it's not the end of the world if you disagree with something they included or excluded.

Their game of the year is hardly even a game.

It's their "Best Game" list and I see a lot of the games they talked about in there. Horizon: Zero Dawn felt like this years Witcher 3. Very good in a lot aspects and a very good game overall, but it somehow didn't click fully with (m)any of them.

Destiny 2 feels weird. Whenever it is brought up, I get the feeling Brad unintentionally tries to keep it from being removed or push it up quickly with little discussion. When it was about to be cut in "Best Looking" he seemed to keep it on until people agreed with him. This time after a (non-binding) vote, it was supposed to be moved up right away.

I got nightmare flashbacks to 2014 when several staff members actively hated disliked the game and they kept talking for a long time until they somehow agreed to push it onto the GOTY list. Like I said, I don't think it's intentionally, but Destiny games seem to have an easier time at Giantbomb than a lot of other gaming publications.

Overall this his years GOTY discussions were quite exhausting.

A "Best World" category that wasn't fully defined an hour into discussions, two categories for best moment (one for Wolfenstein and the regular one) and now the mammoth "Best Game" discussion dragged on a bit for me. Having two game specific categories (Wolfenstein and Mario) seemed a little wasteful, since they were very specific and hard to follow if you didn't play the games.

Like always it was fun to listen/watch. These are the only game of the year lists I care about at all. Keep it up.

I think this is the year that I realized people aren't angry because they're passionate (or rather, they're the minority) about these lists and that it's actually out of some personal identification with certain games or what they believe to be games worthy of being GOTY material and being defensively upset when their expectations doesn't match up with what's happening.

This is so subjective to the n'th degree in the first place. It's 8 people with distinct tastes talking about the "best" (best in terms of what? best how?) game, when not everyone has even played the same amount of each game. Don't expect any kind of science to this artform.

It also says a lot that people are saying that they refuse to listen or watch the deliberation when they have incredulously learned of the winner since the deliberation exists purely so you can know how they've arrived to their conclusion.

Although it's been a tradition and they've setup an expectation, they could have just got on a conference call to have these discussions from the comforts of their home, put out an article with the award winners and be done with it instead of flying everyone in. I just accept these deliberations as a bonus/treat.

@jellybones: For sure. Dan is often quite guilty of that, and even by his own admission. Dan is nothing, if not at the very least pretty self aware.

Some of Dan's arguments against Dream Daddy come across as particularly ridiculous when you remember that last year, his number one personal game (and game that got 10th place on the site list) was a Harvest Moon-style game where you grew crops and gave presents to your crushes. I get not playing Dream Daddy. I get not being into dating sims. What I don't get is his argument against it, considering last year.

I don't agree with Abby saying "it does things for the genre" when she is not familiar with the genre. But other than that, she explains why she likes the game's writing.

@sethmode: I'm just over an hour into the podcast and at the part where he's making these arguments. I'm definitely curious to see how many more times "it doesn't do anything new" is brought up.

This year's list has made me wonder. I doubt it would do anything for the salty comment sections, but I wonder if it might make these deliberations any easier to just make an un-ordered list of top games, and maybe even shorten it to 5 instead of 10, just to keep some of the stakes in the deliberation. I feel like more of the comment irritation, and time spent deliberating come from putting things in a particular number order, rather than deciding what to cut.

@bladeofcreation: Dan is just a big fan of anime, and I think he was disappointed that Doki Doki Literature Club wasn't considered for that spot.

My thoughts on this exactly.

I really liked the addition of Abby and Ben to the mix this year. Having them in the mix made this years lists alot less predictable which was fun.

Abby saying "I think cuphead should be higher" is going to play over my dreams tonight lol.

I think PUBG is an alright game. I also think it is a buggy mess that, much like Mario Maker, is really boring if you don't have anyone to enjoy it with.

That being said, I can see why it is Giant Bombs game of the year. Everyone on the staff loved it or at least enjoyed. Much like Mario Maker, some of the best videos from this year were PUBG. While it might be objectively the best game of the year(if such a thing even exists) and it isn't the top game on many of the staff's personal list, it is important to remember that the category is best game to GB in general, and for GB and the GB community, it clearly was the best game.

I actually agree with you, and I played about 500 hours of PUBG this year. I also can't stand Solo mode in PUBG and won't touch it, and I think the game is a buggy mess. But it's also the most fun I've had playing a game in years.

To all the "Why was PUBG allowed?" and "They are just changing the rules because they like a game!!" people. Let's get some facts clear.

• Yes, the topic of PUBG being in early access came up. Weeks before these deliberations on a Bombcast! And Jeff said that excluding games that will be supported and worked on for a long time only because it's not "finished" has become somewhat limiting because of the changes in the games industry
• They said they might change that for NEXT year, precisely because they din't want to change the rules to allow PUBG
• Only after that they heard about the PUBG 1.0 release in December, otherwise it wouldn't have been in any of this years discussions

So maybe you should think about:

• if you are angry about PUBG, you also have to be angry about Gang Beasts, because it's in the same situation
• there were quite a few December releases over the years that were played very little before delibarations. Did you get angry when they won any categories?
• a game is either eligible or not. Knocking a game for not even being out yet is a non-argument

5 HOURS

Heat signature was Jeff's 8th best game of the year yet it wasn't nominated? I don't get it. I thought they would at least talk about all of their favorite games of the year here.

Looking at this list I think I should seek out other sources of videogame game coverage. The only game on this list I even played or really thought was worth playing is Zelda. If their tastes and mine are so different then wtf am I doing listening to them talk for hours about things I couldn't care less about?

It seems like most of the arguments for Dream Daddy fit better into the Best Characters and Best Story categories. The only mention of gameplay I recall was that it had a few minigames and they weren't great. Subpar gameplay doesn't necessarily disqualify from this category, but I wish this was addressed more instead of repeating how good the characters and story were for what felt like half the video. Or maybe I am just salty cause I like Yakuza a lot lol. Congrats to the ten winners.

Just got to the "putting the top 10 games in order" part of the video, and I am laughing my arse off

That's where I'm at too. They don't play Visual Novels, but one had a gimmick that managed to get Abby interested and she managed to drag Vinny along(that is incredibly reductive, and not an accurate representation, but is illustrative of my point). Dream Daddy admittedly is a good visual novel. However, like you said, I don't think it's even in the top 3 of it's genre...

I bet if everyone on staff played all of these games the list would look very different.

I have nier and and have not played it much but I find abbeys argument against it probably the most ridiculous argument against a game ever.

Jeff said near the beginning that games that they really don't see a chance of making it were trimmed off before even going into this deliberation.

I can see the argument that having barely any of these games align with your taste makes it less relatable but also consider the idea that chasing after sites that does that serves more as an echo chamber and less of a source of exploring new games that you might not have thought about playing before.

Also, you don't have to listen to them for hours if you really find it that off-putting. This is for like one week only and this is the last day, and it's back to the regular schedule.

Yes, Jeff and Dan have both said those things. And Dan often don't have a lot more to say after, but Jeff on the other hand usually follow up with actual arguments for why thinks something is good or bad. Every time I heard "I think it's very good" without an argument for why, I was just thinking "Please tell me why. I want to listen your thoughts of why you think this is good or bad. I want to hear what in this game made you come to your conclusions. I value the thoughts of why way more than just knowing the final conclusion. As a matter of fact, I think the final conclusion is useless without the why."

Vinny is by far the one person in the Giant Bomb crew that know exactly how to properly elaborate on why he thinks something is good or bad, and what the key points that made him care was.

**SPOILERS**

I have no problem with games that I was into getting cut (Horizon and AC: Origins are 2 of my top 3 games this year) I understand that it’s a subjective list and I find it crazy when people act as if you’re deleting their video games by not voting for them.

What I find maddening is when sometimes more time is spent bodying other games and other people’s arguments for them rather than just extoling what you like about the games you’re supporting.

Just getting to the PUBG debate and maybe it's a bias but I think Ben and Abby are reaching hard for their arguments against it. Bringing "hackers" in when I highly doubt they were high enough in the ratings to encounter any. And reducing it to "just a mod" after presenting other games that can also be reduced in similar ways.

@mrguffman: I get the frustration but I think there's something to be said for learning by doing and I'm sure Vinny will have a lot of constructive criticism for her in their next one on one.

Damn Jeff. Paraphrasing - "I would put ~~~Zelda~~~ at ten on this list

@cabbages: What argument? She made several. If you're talking about the butt thing Vinny also pointed out that it was pervy, twice, and not to his tastes.

I feel like some people are deliberately closing their ears at certain key points because I heard Abby make a lot of constructive arguments about the games she liked or didn't like. For a first timer in a Giant Bomb GOTY discussion I think she did a good job.

@mrguffman: Wouldn't you say the same for Jan? He was part of it too, or Jason? I feel like Abby made a whole lot more arguments about the games than both of them did. I personally wouldn't say that for any of them, I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from.

I'm with Dan, to include Dream Daddy over Yakuza 0 is a crime. Not to even mention Horizon, Persona 5, Assassin's Creed, RE7, and many more which are way more complete video game experiences.

I'm a huge Tekken fan but Tekken 7 isn't even the best fighting game of the year.

@niko_of_death said:

And while you may not agree with that, I feel that since this is their list they are allowed to make that decision. I know Jeff talked about maybe changing the whole Early Access policy a while ago and while they didn't officially change it for this year they took an approach that was utilizing what they felt was fair.

And if PUBG didn't come out this year, they would have had to deal with the fact that they broke their own "rules" and that is on them.

I'm really confused by Ben feeling so strongly about Tekken 7 making the list and it not even making his personal top 10.

RIP Yakuza. I was alright with Dream Daddy on the list at the outset, but man, when the alternative was Yakuza? Good loord