It's time for the 2017 Quarterlies! Vote for Quarter to Three's Best Game of 2017

Never. There is no god but data and Metacritic is his prophet.

I still don’t agree about exposure but you’re closer to getting it with the last bit in that I think Prey is a very QT3 game, as there are a bunch of older PC players here who remember System Shock. But that’s not the argument you were making, and I don’t think the same argument works for both Horizon and Prey. All this ignoring game quality, of course.

Votes should be normalized by global sales numbers, metacritic scores, and MSRP. Were we not already doing that?

Isn’t this what got that guy fired from Google because he said it about women?

Me too! I’m an individual too! Just like you!

If people want to fire me from Qt3, so be it.

What would your severance package look like?

A Nintendo golden parachute.

I hate reading those words together.

How about “his large package” or “penis severance”?

Just checking if it’s the words or their relation to each other in the phrase.

What are more mainstream boards?

Mainstream being relative to gaming as opposed to casual game buyers. Resetera.com which took much of NeoGAF’s traffic, though GAF is still there. Gamespot, IGN, Eurogamer, any of those much larger sites.

Qt3 is tiny by comparison, which isn’t a bad thing, but it does have a different crowd than many other places do.

My favorite picture for this discussion.

How identical does the Qt3 list have to look to “mainstream” sites’ to be deemed legitimate? Give us a percentage.

If your point isn’t that the list is illegitimate in some way, then I’m wondering what your point is. Qt3 is small? Actually, I bet we have many more people voting than a lot of those sites (just their writers and editors in most cases?) and that Qt3 is a more diverse segment of the gaming population!

I’m pretty sure Dave was talking about the reader game of the year votes on those site, not the staff ones.

Right. Readers. Why would I compare applea and oranges. We’re just readers here.

  1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

This game is special to me for a lot of reasons: Breath of the Wild reminds me of the freedom and raw untamed exploration of the early cRPGs that piqued my interest in videogames. It’s the first complex, systems driven game I’ve played with my son; and exploring its world together has been endlessly joyful for us. And for me it’s the first game to nail merging some of my favourite game types into a single cohesive experience.

  1. PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS

The first moment I stumbled on a Twitch streamer playing Battle Royale mod, I both had my mind blown by what I was seeing and was immediately convinced that this thing was going to be huge. Any game that can make someone like me want to actively play an online shooter has to have something very special going on.

  1. Total War: Warhammer 2

Warhammer 2 does some subtle things, but together they may be a revolutionary leap in the Total War formula, and possibly the whole genre. This game is the best blend of asymmetric factions, rich world building, and strong narrative threads I’ve seen in a strategy game.

  1. Opus Magnum

The cleverest thing that the verifiable clever Zach Barth ever did was make Opus Magnum easy. The second cleverest thing he did was add friend leader boards to his puzzle games. The third cleverest thing he did was have an animated gif export function for your solutions. Together with a genuinely approachable but deep “alchemical engineering” system, he has built the definitive competitive puzzle game.

  1. Torment: Tides of Numenera

This game is not in the same league as the four above, which I’m convinced can be enjoyed by anyone. Tides of Numenera asks a lot of its player, the biggest of its questions is: Are you okay reading fantasy War and Peace in your cRPG? If yes, I guarantee you a unique and fascinating experience.

Games that might have troubled this list if I’d had a chance to play them:
Prey
Nier: Automata
Super Mario Odyssey
Divinty: Original Sin 2

Games I really dug that weren’t released this year:
Total War: Rome 2
Star Wars: Rebellion
The Magic Circle
Technobabylon

One more day everybody! :)

Thanks for following formatting instructions, responding to requests to fix your posts, and making this go smoothly!

Yeah, great job by all, and thanks for taking this and running with it Bruce, and to arrendek for automating so much of the process!