Game of the Year 2018: Day Five Deliberations

They're not the same hats.

These GOTY discussions are much nicer to watch in a year when you don't really have a horse in the race.

@danryckert thanks for pushing Red Dead 2 onto the Most Disappointing top 3; I don't always see eye-to-eye with you but that game straight up broke my heart. My favourite game of last generation to a game that I gave up on 10 hours in...

It's not "worst game at launch" of the year though.

Man, Alex really getting shafted with his pick for most disappointing at the end there.

@passingthrough: it's not challenging, and bloating the world with little fun VISUAL details but poorly implementing basically any way of interacting with it is sign of a bad game. It's so obvious to see the problems with this game, and is absurd to deny it. Even avid defenders of the game accept that the actual game part of the game is the weakest.

Poor Jan. Hang in there.

Warframe not being nominated for best On Going Game, much less being on the Top 3 is criminal.

@shorap: Do you think that Rockstar intentionally set out to turn the white savior trope on its head? Or do you think that it's just a byproduct of Rockstar trying to come up with the shittiest outcome for characters in its game, as seems to often be the case with their narratives?

Im just glad Brad didn't get everything he wanted

This cements my opinion that Dan was right. Red Dead 2 deserved being put on the Biggest Disappointment list. I'm just disappointed that it made it so high on the GOTY list.

@av_gamer: I think if Jeff had kept checking in on it, it may have come up but yeah, its a real big shame. That game is doing both F2P and live-game stuff so incredibly well its pretty insane. Probably wouldn't have won but much like Fortnite, it has come to define what it means to be a live-game to me in the past year or two.

As someone who hated the recaps, I could see this being a decent compromise... 3 days of it and 10 categories cut for those recaps was ludicrous.

What's shallow about those arguments? The game is not fun to many and that far outweighs the fact that the game has a nice story. If it's not fun to play it's not going to save the game no matter how pretty it looks and how good the story is.

But why should they go back to a game they found so profoundly disappointing at launch? Why was the apparently amazing content that's in Sea of Thieves now not in at launch to get people to stick around? It did nothing to hook them and there was no incentive to revisit it.

I agree with Jeff if new DBZ fighters looks like old DBZ

I don't really think it's stockholm syndrone when you just like the game. I liked the game a whole lot as well because I had fun with it. On the flipside I can't imagine playing more than 5 minutes of Tetris without being bored to tears. Different strokes for different folks and all that. Also seeing Tetris get first place is absolutely insane to me because it's Tetris, it's the same exact game we've been playing for years except now it has a prettier overlay. I'm not sure why a lot of the staff like Ben felt like now they should start looking up strategies and caring about the game in a more serious manner when they could have been doing that for years. But like I said, different strokes and all that.

This whole thing (especially the last 10 minutes) is a great listen. 2018 has been a cool year for videogames.

P.S. I disagree vehemently with Sea of Thieves getting Most Disappointing; I'd even make a case for it winning Best Ongoing Game. I think the GB staff really MISSED THE BOAT ON THIS ONE.

I think I agree with most of the lists they ended up with. If I was in the room I'd fight for swapping the 1 & 2 on the final top 10.

The one thing I sure as hell didn't agree on was cutting A Way Out in favor of Fallout 76 for most disappointing game. Fallout 76 totally ended up as I feared it would, and A Way Out was way worse than I thought it was going to be. That said, I didn't play any of those two games.

I'm looking at Florance in the play store. It's only 24SEK where I'm at ($2.68), and seems to be well worth it.

I don't think I will ever understand why people love Tetris so much or even call it "perfect". It's so boring.

good lordy that most disappointing debate. stressful, but also part of the reason why this website is great.

i'm relieved things went dan's way in end. there are countless historical precedents for the strength of one staff's experience overcoming consensus. dan made the strongest emotional argument for disappointment vs. the others who came off as simply uncomfortable with the word 'disappointing' being next to RDR2. it's more complicated than that- but he was expressing what felt like true disappointment in the affirmative vs. the rest saying 'i had an amazing experience therefore it cannot be disappointing,' which just didn't carry enough water for me vs. dan's view.

Disappointed Celeste didn't see a ton of love and felt bad for Jason.

Also, Jason's level always seem low on every podcast. He's a bit quiet too so could you guys bring him up a bit.

Much as I'd like to call out the foolishness of one member throughout this (*cough*Dan*cough*), they all pretty much take responsibility for the silliest choice: declaring a pretty port of Tetris the number one game of the year of our lord 2018. Abby seemed to be the only one who realized that this was a shortsighted compromise that will look downright strange five years from now but they all sort of just seemed to be entranced by some kind of strange groupthink.

@roadshell: I only really care about the discussions they have. As for their "consensus" you only have to look towards last year. PUBG winning GOTY was simply ridiculous. Tetris winning GOTY was sort of default even if a bit underwhelming. I feel Dead Cells sholuld have won it if were going by a more deserving group winner.

I haven't finished the whole video yet but the way Alex and Brad quickly tried to fill in the 3 slots for most disappointing, pushed an exaggerated disappointment with Fallout 76 and then dug in their heels for an hour just so Red Dead wouldn't be on the list was pretty not cool.Brad even marked off Sea Of Thieves as the winner before they had even knocked it down to 3.

I absolutely adored when Vinny rightly spoke up and set shit straight.

@fram I completely disagree. SoT was a plainly average game that could have and should have been so much more. With the amount of hype and marketing MS put towards it it fell WAY BELOW expectations. It's just not a fun game period. Winning most dissapointing was justified. In fact SoT has been given "most dissapoinging" nods in just about every site i've seen this year.

@bladeofcreation: It’s possible it’s Rockstar being Rockstar but the tribe is able to escape to Canada with the help of Charles. I think typical Rockstar would be the whole tribe getting killed.

Destiny never got GOTY. It made it into top 10 because brad loved it so much. In truth It didn't even belong in top 20 but thats how things go

@piano_dentist Not it wasn't robbed. Sure you can make an argument but God of War looked phenomenal at times. I didn't care for RDR's graphics. They were impressive in a "thats cool and super realistic way but Fantasy visuals are much more impressive for me. Technically GoW just looks better because its less open world and has higher polygon count, better textures and just a more vibrant world. Thats not to say RDR2 doesn't look great it does but to say it got robbed is silly. :

When the list leaked ahead of time, I had a real good laugh. How can anyone be mad about Tetris Effect taking it? I think it's very funny in the final discussion how, after arguing about games for hours, you all come together at this one game I totally would not have expected. It's not my game of the year by any stretch, but I'm glad you got to chill out with what you loved lmao. Happy new year, and thanks for all the great content this holiday season!

Most Disappointed was the Minerva's Den vs Lair of the Shadow Broker/Dream Daddy vs Yakuza of this year, but this time I knew to skip an hour ahead.

@rivierahaz: It's responsible for my best personal moments of the year. The time limited Megalodon mini-campaign kept me up till 4am and adding a whole bunch of random folks to my friends list which I haven't done in years.

Just being out on the seas is as enjoyable to me as "being" in the world of Red Dead is for others. It's also easily the most fun I've had this year in a videogame.

Personal opinions aside, the GB crew basically played the game once and never checked back in on it. I just don't think it's justified for MOST disappointing, but hey each to their own!

Believe me, I thought that was lame too, especially given how most of their reasons seemed to be more about how much of a phenomenon that game was rather than its actual qualities, which looks increasingly silly a year later knowing that it was a few months away from being steamrolled by Fortnight. However, that was at least an actual 2017 game and they had most of the year to consider it rather than a repackaging of an old game that got released a month earlier that they were getting high on or something. Also there was a little bit of actual debate around that choice rather than just Abby trying to be the voice of reason for a minute before giving up in frustration.

I have so much respect for Ben from all these discussions, absolute MVP IMO. He did a great job at always having well-reasoned arguments, being convincing and hanging with the toughest debaters there, being able to get conversations back on track when they were getting derailed, and always having a sense of humor about it all.

@ares42: Agree about the 3 days of going through all the games. Especially if you listen to all the Beastcasts and Bombcasts through the year as the content didn't really add much to what we hadn't heard before.

Guess it would be good for people new to the site.

Not a fan of a ton of the arguments on the comments this year but biggest one that i had to come in and help defend was the little guy saying how the big/majority said they fell off a game thats ment to be online developed etc. and cement that its so bad. GB gets a pass. they arent trying to go back into games. their trying to do quick takes. But we live in a age when the whole it should be good from start argument isnt so strong....case in point GB goty PUBG or FORTNITE the biggest game in history was shot off buy people like you yet its big. Reminds me of the big wig exec saying no more single player we need money and multiplayer is what people like ...and shorter games...We as gamers fell behind not games. We developed a sense of gimmie gimme and forgot to let go of our ADHD tendecy and enjoy and embrace games...cant find time then find some idk man gaming channels these days with the same tired games are too ..... hit me hard this year ...GB is a welcome change till i saw the comments.

@piano_dentist: The team dont really have much knowledge on games as a service type games, Its clear they dont have the time to dedicate to one game due to the job they have,Allways new games to play.

Dedicating a whole catagory to long supported games seems misguided when none of them really play them.

It's so funny how many of you people still don't understand that this is all subjective. What purpose do your comments serve? "I can't believe this wasn't higher" or "That game was robbed!" etc. Why do you even make the effort to comment when you know the answer? IT'S SUBJECTIVE!

So the argument against Hitman 2 was that it was more of a great two year old game. But Tetris Effect won, which is more of a game that is 30 years old. I guess I don't get it.

I just finished today's timestamps, you can find them earlier in the comment section. To everyone that thanked me for them over the week: you're welcome, and I hope y'all enjoyed the awards!

Kick-ass list guys, thanks for a great year. Now to watch the Quick Looks of the top ten games.

Some rather cancerous comments here again spread across these GOTY features.

I think it's great to be passionate, but sometimes a small section of you guys make this community come off as incredibly toxic, basically only half a step up from an average Youtube comment section. The constant editor and staff member bashing is especially gross.

Abby was right, only reason Tetris won was it was the most inoffensive and milktoast game on the list. I bought into the hype about that game for $40......that game is not worth $40. It is cool Tetris I played a few times and then I wondered why I bought it. Also Spiderman being so low is a crime especially since if you look at there individual lists it is much higher for most everyone on the staff

@killwanye: I made that comment on day one and it did not change for me after day 3. If they do this next year I feel like I can just listen to the last 2 days and skip the first 3.

These talks were very positive, and I can't get angry about Tetris Effect taking number one. Not one of my favorite games, but it makes a lot more sense than PUBG did last year and seemed like a good compromise. The truly baffling thing to me was Dead Cells being so high, but whatevs. Great job with these, I feel like everyone was on top of their game this year.

Even Dan managed to push for God of War without being grating and belittling games he didn't like as much. Love the more upbeat tone of the discussions this year, they were clearly having a great time with these.