The time has come yet again, and it is time for us to debate and discuss what the best games of the year has been. This will be the third year we’re running a GOTY celebration, with last year being a full list of categories and winners.
From this week, threads will be made for every category, and I would like everyone to nominate their favourite per each category. If a category doesn’t get 4 or more nominations, I will add nominations from the list of 2018 games based on Metacritic scores. This will ensure that each category will have at least 4 games to choose from.
Nominations will be open for a week, after which the results will be tallied, and the voting threads will be created. These threads will again be open for a week, and everyone must vote on their favourite in each category.
The Categories
The categories chosen are:
Best Game Released on Xbox One in 2019
Best Game Released on PlayStation 4 in 2019
Best Game Released on Switch in 2019
Best Game Released on PC in 2019
Best Game Released on Mobile in 2019
Best Multiplayer Game of the Year
Best Story in a game in 2019
Best New Game for Space Enthusiasts of 2019
Best Game for Petrol Heads of 2019
Best Game for Punching things in the face of 2019
Best Loot Collector Simulator of 2019
Best Indie Game of the Year
Most Disappointing event/game of the year
Most Improved Game of the Year
Most Epic Game of the Year
Categories are open for discussion and change, and I’ll give another day or two of discussions for potential changes to categories.
Discussion is now open on the categories, or any changes that you might want to see with the decision of the best game of the year.
I can’t believe it’s that time of the year already.
Are the platform awards meant to be for games that were exclusively released for those platforms?
Perhaps we should also add some kind sub-awards for multiplatform games. Like genre awards? I’m thinking of games like Borderlands 3, The Outer Worlds, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, Gwent, The Division 2, Devil May Cry 5, Sekiro, The Division 2 etc., etc.
That could balloon the awards a lot, but we don’t have to have awards for every conceivable thing. We can focus on the games people on MEW seem to care about a lot, expanding on the “Best Story” award, e.g.:
Best New Space game
Best New City Builder or Strategy game (should these be separate?)
Best New Racing game
Best New ARPG and/or Looter-Shooter
Another awards category I’d like to suggest is “Most improved game of the year” or “Best update/expansion/DLC of the year” or something like that. Nominees would include games like No Man’s Sky, Warframe, World of WarCraft, Warhammer Vermintide 2, and such.
The idea behind the console specific awards are to choose the best games that released on these platforms, regardless of exclusivity. No Xbox games released exclusively on the console, and rather all had PC versions as well. For this reason I thought it would be best to word it as Best Game Released on console x. Hope that makes sense, otherwise we can change.
I always tried the genre specific threads with MyGaming, but those had too many inconsistencies regarding which game falls under which genre. And also what is a specific genre didn’t have any good games released during the year, or which genres do we actually use. For me it would make more sense to keep it platform specific, but then we run the risk of having the same results as last year, where RDR2 swept all the console awards.
I like the idea of expanding to games in which MEW seems to be overly obsessed with. That makes sense, but again where do we draw the line. As an example, I know there is a die-hard contingency of fighting game fans on here. They may not be the most vocal, or have the most threads posted, but they are just as passionate as our petrol head freaks.
I completely agree on the Most Improved Game of the Year. In fact, that one will be added to the lineup right now.
Woohoo! For once I have some games to nominate that I played that actually released this year. Usually I’m a year or a few years back in terms of the games I’m playing.
City builder and turn-based strategy (4X games) have some commonality, but they have some distinctions as well; city builders tend not to include combat elements, for example. RTS games on the other hand should not be classed as city builders in any form.
Yeah… I was in two minds about the genre idea myself. Best way to test an idea is to say it out loud. Or write it down. Even better to test it against y’all
Rather than the classic genres, maybe the additional categories should allow more flexibility.
“Space game” is a good example. It doesn’t specify shooter, RPG, or combat flight sim, merely that the game is set in space.
Rather than “racing”, maybe the category should be “motoring”. Or it could be the “MEW Petrolhead Award”.
If the folks who are into fighting games want a category, maybe a “Best Hand-to-hand Combat Game of the Year” or maybe the “MEW Fighter’s Choice Award”? That can cover games like Sekiro, Dark Souls, Batman, and Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat.
Should we split the Multiplayer award into Co-op Multiplayer and Competitive Multiplayer? That way games like Borderlands 3 aren’t up for the same award as Apex Legends.
Where I’d draw the line is that any categories we add must have people here who would nominate and vote for games in that category. The awards can reflect who we are as a community… it doesn’t have to be all-encompassing. But enough people must be interested in a category to nominate and vote for games in it.
You were right to end the genre-specific categories if they weren’t working. If y’all are in agreement, we can try some of these other categories and see if they work. If they don’t, we won’t use them again next year.
Okay we can try out the alternative genre categories. Hopefully there will be enough people that vote and nominate games for the awards. Another thing I keep on thinking about is the amount of games released this year in these genres. Because these awards should focus on 2019 games only, as I have other plans for other games not from this year…
So I suggesting the following:
Best New Space Game of 2019
Best Game for Petrol Heads of 2019
Best Game for Punching things in the face of 2019
Best Loot Collector Simulator of 2019
Okay guys. let’s give this until the end of the weekend for a think, and I’ll create the threads on Sunday. Can then vote the entire next week, and the week thereafter have the winner posts. Then at the end of November we will have the winners of the annual MEW GOTY’s!!!
If you’re like me and can’t remember what you had for dinner two nights ago, I’ve found using the annual lists over on metacritic as a reminder of when something was released and on what platform.
Also @DieGrootHammer, is there a cutoff point for nominations? As in, there are a couple of games that aren’t out yet but that will still release this year that might be worthy of a nomination. Jedi Fallen Order and the Pokemon Sword/Shield games for example.
I’ll keep the nominations open until this weekend. We’ll see how many nominations we’ve received, and can even go an extra few days next week to pick up any other stragglers.
Swell. On that basis though, technically could we therefore also nominated games released late last year? Say eligible games from mid-November 2018 to mid-November 2019? (I honestly can’t remember if there was anything notable released late last year. Just for in case, and for the future.)
Potentially yes. Like the new Star Wars game is releasing this week. It should be no problem to nominate. I would hesitate and say no games later than this week, so no Pokemon perhaps. Have to draw a line somewhere.
