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I think Journey deserved the honor to be honest, but TWD was DEFINITELY a close second. Not a lot of games have made me cry, but I shed some manly-ass tears at TWD's ending.

What do y'all think?

>Spike choosing GOTY
No taste, casual.
Dragon's Dogma is my GOTY.

Trust me, I'm as far from a casual as you can get, and I hate Spike with a burning passion. But everyone seems to treat it as the GotY authority. Like I said, I don't think it is, but whatever. Discuss!

Don't worry, I was mocking Spike, not you.

Understandable. Whoever wrote Samuel L Jackson's speeches makes me want to vomit. All the bro humour. shudders

Usually I don't really trust Spike's GotY judgement, but even though I haven't finished TWD I have seen enough to know it was at least good enough to be in the running for GotY
So all in all

I have played only one game this entire year, and it came out one year and one month ago.

Also, tfw one of their fans shot his GF after she called it unrealistic.

>2012
>Not naming Bass Duel GOTD and GOTY
>The shiggies will darken the sun
>Then we will diggy in the shade

>Walking Dead won GOTY
>Half-Life 2 won GOTD

Don't forget Best Overall SFM video, which definitely deserved it (and after we all thought it got snubbed for Best Drama, no less) -

Wrong awards bro.

Nope, it was announced at the VGAs.

….Spike was chosen to announce the overall winner of the Saxxys by VALVe
The awards for the Saxxys may be over already, but the overall victor hadn't been revealed until tonight

Hmm, I saw the entire livestream and I didn't see it. Out of the two hours, they only revealed six winners. That's not how you do an awards show.

If you stream the entire thing to one audience, then its a limited demographic
by leaving the final overall winner to Spike, they're broadening their audience
More people from TF2 will turn into Spike to watch, and TF2 is introduced to a wider audience
Win/win for both VALVe and Spike

I didn't like that game.

Walking Dead wasn't so much a game as it was an interactive story. Nobody plays it for the simple puzzles or QTE's, it's played for the story. It deserves interactive story of the year, not GOTY.

Games are judged by their merit, not by how "Gamelike" they are. That's like rejecting a book because it's not bookish enough. If it's better than the competition, then it doesn't matter.

The fact this was a user voted award restored some faith in the gaming community.
Sure, I liked Mass Effect 3 and Journey better than The Walking Dead (and don't get me wrong, I fucking loved The Walking Dead), but the fact a downloadable title over several triple-a releases was able to win Game of the Year is and outstanding feat. Hell, just being nominated is amazing.

Journey was downloadable too. ;_;

I know. I'd feel the same way if Journey had won.

I'd feel even better if Journey won, because it's something more than the action-filled fuckfest that's typically expected of games. (Not that TWD is, but I feel that Journey's done something that most other games have never done.)

That's where I'd have to disagree. There's a consistent argument going on about what makes a game a game, and I've been a strong proponent of the idea that gameplay should always be the first priority of making a video game. I didn't play TWD, but if it's being called an interactive story, and it's one GotY, that's a vast oversight on their part in my opinion.

That's a huge, huge limitation on what games are able to offer. Games should be able to offer more than the tiny bit of dopamine released upon completing some arbitrary virtual task.

Then maybe we should open the spectrum on what a movie is, or solidify the interactive film as a medium. Seriously, they're called video games for a reason. Making the "game" part a secondary function is missing the point; it's like making a movie where you watch nothing but a man on a screen read a book to you (and don't anyone make a Princess Bride joke: you know that doesn't count). The point of the medium was to move games into the digital, and moving away from that only harms the medium.

I'm with brawler on this.

Please tell me how games like Journey and The Walking Dead are harming the medium.

Any game that is liked for its story more than it's gameplay is a harm to the medium. I'd say the same thing about modern day FF titles: they are focusing on a story rather than a gameplay experience, and if games like that are the popular trend in developers, they take all control out of the hands of the player just for the sake of a fancy story.

You keep coming back to the circular assertion "Narrative over gameplay is harmful to the medium" without backing it up or really addressing the question.

I also think that you're proposing a false dichotomy here; Games can be completely gameplay-centric or heavily narrative-centric, but there is an entire continuum dividing those two points, and games can be found populating every square inch of it. Metal Gear Solid has become one of the most popular game series of all time despite its extremely high Story-to-Gameplay ratio. MGS 4 has even earned the affectionate nickname "Movie Gear Solid" from fans. Time and time again, games like Heavy Rain and Bioshock receive showers of critical praise for their immersive and engaging storylines, and you'd rather critique them than something as gameplay-focused as, say, Call of Duty? Because I'd love to discuss how beneficial that franchise has been to the game industry.

I feel like I have addressed it. I'm explaining it as best as I know how: in a medium that was originally centered around player interactivity, taking that away from the player for the sake of the plot is moving the entire medium away from its original intent, which is not something that should be occurring at all, in my opinion.

As for your second point, yes, I would rather critique them by gameplay. I'm not one at all to say that the excessive amount of shooters is the pinnacle of gaming as we know it, but it's certainly a better step to take than games like the MS series. I understand that games like those are adored by their fanbase, but as I keep repeating, I can't consider them real games, because they only really deal with the plot, which is a step downward to me. Seriously, people complain constantly about how story-heavy MS is, and I'm not one to disagree. I can't even give two flips about Beyond, because it's just going to be one big movie; if I wanted a big movie with Ellen Page in it, I'd just go watch Inception and close my eyes when anyone else besides her is on screen. I can't make it any clearer than that: "games" with little gameplay are not really games, they are just movies with some interactive parts, and I believe that the direction games like that encourage in the medium is a negative one, and takes away the focus of what gaming is supposed to be about. I don't care what positive opinions they bring to video games as a medium from the outside opinion, because anyone whose first experience is Heavy Rain will be severely disappointed by Super Mario Bros. if they really liked Heavy Rain. And for the record, I happen to like the Call of Duty franchise, and if Call of Duty allows a continuous flow of revenue to the market, there's your benefit right there.

Hallelujah, it seems we've found our solution: Stop calling story-centric games games.

You seem caught up on the fact that they were originally designed to be simple, verge-of-pointless exercises in task-solving. (And for the record, there were designed that way because that's all that developers had to work with.)

Divorce story games from gameplay games and you have your glorious solution. If you can't consider them games, then don't. But I'd like to mention something else.

Some people like story games, some people like gameplay games. There is no good reason that one type could be considered better, because both satisfy the need that they set out to satisfy. (Regardless of the label they might be constrained by.) You have yet to identify why one is inherently better than the other, other than pointing out that they're becoming different than what they originally were. And yes, this is true. That does not mean that they should be confined to simplistic 8-bit graphics and memory constraints either. This seems more a case of "Stop liking what I don't like" than a legitimate criticism of where the game industry is headed.

That's not at all the case. One of my favorite series is Phoenix Wright, which is a perfect example of something I wouldn't call a video game, but rather an interactive novel. You aren't listening to what I have to say at all: it is not that story is pointless and terrible, it is that you can't call a game a game if the game part isn't the focus. You can spend hours giving the back story of every player on a football team, but it isn't football until someone hikes the ball and throws it. I love good stories, I look for that in video games; I love Phoenix Wright, Professor Layton, and Legend of Zelda. But, as I have said repeatedly over and over again, the medium is called "video games", and taking away the game part is changing the medium.

Honestly, I'm through with this argument. This isn't even relevant to the topic, and I'm tired of debating with someone who thinks I'm just being snooty. If you desperately want to continue, bring it to my wall, but I'm done here.

If all you're worried about is the label, then the discussion is indeed as futile as you say. Like I've said, just don't refer to them as games and you have your solution.