There are very fine people on both sides of the shitbonerz.
I am forever shamed!
And smack in the middle.
“I am damned. Damned now and for all eternity! … Well, tomorrow’s another day.” – Jean-Arthur Rimbaud
I kind of like the non-stacked point system for this. With 10 years (11 depending on semantics) to cover, there is going to be a LOT of games, and I think someone listing it in their top X games should count equally. I’m more curious of which games get mentioned most often than someone ranking it at the top of their list.
Yeah, I changed my vote to non-ranked for similar reasons. There are way too many games to sort through without needing to fine tune a ranking on top of it.
My inner statistician likes the old 1st place = 5 points, 3rd place = 3 points, 5th place = 1 point distribution. However, because the poll is covering an entire decade of games, there are presumably enough good games for everyone to list that we don’t end up with the same “pretty good but not legendary” game at place #8-10 on every list that somehow becomes the best game of the decade though not one person who voted for it would have called it that. Which is of course the danger in 1 vote = 1 point ranking as opposed to a point system.
Edited to add: I also think the point system gives better representation to niche games that a small number of people deeply loved.
Alternatively, we could do a hybrid of 1 & 2 - calculate the ranked lists AND come up with a “most mentioned games” list.
If people are doing the ranking I can cut the data a lot of ways but I feel like some of people voting against ranking are doing so because picking games and being done is easier. Please note that I do not mean this as a criticism.
My feeling about ranking is that it could distort the results too much. The best (let’s say) 10 games of the decade are all going to be fantastic, top-tier games with not much between them. To give one of your picks ten times the number of points of another seems too big a difference to me.
Btw, really appreciate the work you and @Brooski do on these polls! They’re a great way of finding new game recommendations.
We’re putting way too much thought into a process that will ultimately select Dark Souls as the winner anyway.
I think that the biggest problem is going to be how to handle franchises in the vote. For example:
Civ V and Civ VI are such different games, they need to be different entities.
But OOTP13 and OOTP17 – not at all. If you can’t vote for OOTP in general, you are simply splintering the vote.
We should make sure an admin pins the thread to the top of the forums so it catches more eyes.
If I recall correctly once a person has read it they can unpin it , so they don’t see it at the top every time they log on.
You take your damned ideas and you get out of here, ya hear! I won’t hear it. I won’t hear a word of it now. Skeedaddle!
:P
Ya think? I’d assumed it’d be Witcher 3. One of those two certainly does seem likely, though.
Mind you, I’ve barely played DS (not my cuppa) and haven’t played W3 (didn’t care for 2), I’m just going by chatter.
Neither of which make my top 5, and Witcher 3 only maybe makes my top 10.
But there is a clear top 2 for me, with a sharp drop off after.
Can we just pragmatically look at the previous year’s game of the year picks and just vote on those titles? How many year’s worth of quarterlies do we have?
Witcher 3 is a wonderful experience, but the mere servicable combat system knocks the actual game play rating down significantly. I’d still put it right up there in the top 10 though, easily, even though it fails to live up to a #1 rating.
I would also think that under different circumstances Minecraft might even have had a chance of being #1, but since that hit the street for the first time in 2009 it doesn’t actually qualify. But along with Dark Souls, it is certainly one of the most influential games of the last couple generations.
I agree with this. Maybe run the point values from 6-15 or 11-20 instead to avoid it. So every game that makes your list at all gets a kicker to represent that you think it’s way better than some random game that didn’t make the list, and the ratio between first and tenth is only 2X or 3X instead of 10X.
Here, I tried to put it together:
2010
(The Top 20 in this year was weighted per user by how long you’d been voting and how many posts you had, so Tom’s @DaveLong’s votes got counted for the most points, for example, and new users got counted the least).
Mass Effect 2
Fallout: New Vegas
Minecraft
Red Dead Redemption
Just Cause 2
BioShock 2
Alpha Protocol
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
Dead Rising 2
Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale
Bayonetta
Civilization V
Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition
Supreme Commander 2
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
Pinball FX2
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
Heavy Rain
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
2011
We didn’t vote in 2011 for some reason. Major releases that were on people’s personal lists that year:
Portal 2
Batman: Arkham City
L.A. Noire
Saints Row: The Third
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Dead Space 2
Rayman Origins
Super Mario 3D Land
Gears of War 3
Bastion
Superbrothers: Sword and Sorcery
Orcs Must Die!
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Forza Motorsport 4
Mario Kart 7
Driver: San Francisco
Space Pirates and Zombies
To The Moon
Witcher 2
Space Marine
Frozen Synapse
Magicka
Battlefield 3
2012
XCOM
Borderlands 2
Walking Dead
Guild Wars 2
Dishonored
FTL
Mass Effect 3
Dark Souls
Diablo 3
Journey
Dragon’s Dogma
Crusader Kings
Torchlight 2
Hotline Miami
Mark of the Ninja
Planetside 2
Warlock: Master of the Arcane
Xenoblade Chronicles
Eador: Genesis
Far Cry 3
Secret World
2013
Tomb Raider
Saints Row IV
Grand Theft Auto V
Last of Us
Gone Home
Bioshock Infinite
Brothers
Spelunky
XCOM DLC
Wargame: Airland Battles
State of Decay
Papers Please
Fire Emblem: Awakening
Rogue Legacy
Zelda: Link Between Worlds
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
Europa Universalis IV
Don’t Starve
Stanley Parable
Path of Exile
Metro: Last Light
2014
Divinity: Original Sin
Diablo III
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Elite: Dangerous
Dragon Age: Inquisition
(Only top 5, other games that got votes that year:)
Age of Wonders III
Might & Magic X: Legacy
Elder Scrolls Online
South Park: The Stick of Truth
Dark Souls II
Wolfenstein: The New Order
Destiny
Bravely Default
Wolf Among Us
Mario Kart 8
Titanfall
Super Smash Bros
Alien: Isolation
Infamous: Second Son
Monument Valley
2015
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Fallout 4
Pillars Of Eternity
Rocket League
Dying Light
Metal Gear Solid V
Bloodborne
Life Is Strange
Invisible, Inc
Kerbal Space Program
Cities Skylines
Massive Chalice
Rebel Galaxy
Chaos Reborn
Dark Souls 2: Scholar ed.
GTA V PC
DiRT Rally
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Divinity Original Sins Enhanced Ed.
Heroes of the Storm
2016
Doom & Witcher 3: Blood & Wine - shared number 1
Offworld Trading Company
XCOM 2
Dark Souls 3
Stardew Valley
Overwatch
Dishonored 2
Total War: Warhammer
The Division
Hitman
Grim Dawn
Deus Ex, M.D.
Darkest Dungeon
Inside
Uncharted 4
Titanfall 2
Forza Horizon 3
Hearts of Iron 4
2017
Horizon: Zero Dawn
Prey
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
XCOM 2: War of the Chosen
Mass Effect: Andromeda
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Super Mario Odyssey
Total War: Warhammer 2
NieR: Automata
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
Persona 5
Nioh
Ghost recon: Wildlands
Age of Rivals
Race for the Galaxy
Through the Ages
What Remains of Edith Finch
Destiny 2
Dominions 5
2018
Battletech
Subnautica
Red Dead Redemption 2
Slay the Spire
Rimworld
Into the Breach
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
Monster Hunter World
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age
Dead Cells
Marvel’s Spider-Man
God of War
Return of the Obra Dinn
Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Pillars of Eternity 2
Forza Horizon 4
Hitman 2
Overload
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War
2019
Disco Elysium
Slay the Spire
Control
Outer Wilds
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Sekiro: Shadws Die Twice
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw
Anno 1800
Oxygen Not Included
Remnant: From the Ashes
Resident Evil 2
The Outer Worlds
Age of Wonders: Planetfall
Devil May Cry 5
A Short Hike
A Plague Tale: Innocence
Total War: Three Kingdoms
Return of the Obra Dinn
IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Bodenplatte
I have to say, 2010 was a really, really strong year. If we had voted in 2011, that would have been an interesting vote tally. A lot of people loved Skyrim, but then a lot of people loved Dark Souls that year too, and others really loved Batman: Arkham City and Portal 2.
Still, even keeping this to 20 games a year, a lot of games that didn’t make the top 20 were really beloved by some. So I’m not sure if restricting it to these 200 or so games is a good idea anyway. But this is a good starting point as a list of the best of the decade.
Thanks for the lists.
Yeah, seeing that Witcher 3 officially misses my top 10.
As for years, it’s funny. One of the strongest IMO, 2013, is followed by the weakest.