1

…The Witcher 3. Which surprises absolutely no one here, I’d guess, especially if you glanced at the voting in [URL="http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?78211-Quarterlies-2015!-Vote-on-the-best-game-of-2015!"]this thread.

Thing of it is, it was a dominating win. Even compared to other years, when there was more or less voting, The Witcher 3 stands out for community adulation.

First, let’s look at the top ten, with votes received in parentheses.

  1. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (213)
  2. Fallout 4 (66)
  3. Pillars Of Eternity (58)
  4. (tie) Rocket League (51)
  5. (tie) Dying Light (51)
  6. Metal Gear Solid V (47)
  7. Bloodborne (44)
  8. Life Is Strange (38)
  9. Invisible, Inc (34)
    10.Kerbal Space Program (32)

That’s a pretty fantastic list of games right there! If I do say so as a member, we forum-ites have pretty good taste.

So first, that margin between first and second place in the poll is pretty stunning. Back in 2012 we had the most votes cast for a game ever, with XCOM getting a whopping 275 points. BUT…it’s useful to make comparisons by looking at percentage of the votes. Of all the games in 2012 in the top 10 for that year, there were 1393 votes cast, and XCOM got 20% of them.

This year, for games in the top 10 there were 639 votes cast. The Witcher 3 captured 34% of those votes. It had more than triple the votes of the nearest competitor.

The Witcher 3 also clearly captivated those who voted for it. Overwhelmingly, when the game was in someone’s list, it was their number one pick. Only one person, scharmers, had it ranked 5 on a list. 35 people voted for it as their favorite game of the year.

Fallout 4 did well, of course. It got a lot of mentions, but a lot of them were middle-range rankings.

Pillars of Eternity got almost no love in the early voting, and then stormed back from being out of the top 20 to the third spot overall.

No surprise that Rocket League did so well. It’s a fantastic game garnering great praise. I was actually kind of surprised to see how well Dying Light did, though! My impressions before compiling this list was that Dying Light was in the “OK, but nothing special” category. Lots and lots of folks ranked it, though, and now once I get time, I’m all in.

In early voting, both Bloodborne and MGS: V were in second or third place, but fell off towards the end. I don’t know what that means, other than maybe fans of those games tend to be more eager about voting for them.

Life is Strange was a pleasant surprise. Almost no one voted for it through the first day or two that voting was open, and then the deluge. Happy for that, and definitely looking forward to diving in.

Finally, Invisible, Inc and Kerbal Space Program round out the top 10 with two very different strategy gaming takes.

The rest of the top 20…

  1. Cities Skylines (28)
  2. Massive Chalice (27)
  3. Rebel Galaxy (26)
  4. Chaos Reborn (23)
  5. (Tie) Dark Souls 2: Scholar ed. (22)
  6. (Tie) GTA V PC (22)
  7. DiRT Rally (21)
  8. Rise of the Tomb Raider (19)
  9. Divinity Original Sins Enhanced Ed. (18)
  10. Heroes of the Storm (17)

Other things of note: either not many of us own Wii Us, or those of us who do don’t vote in polls. Only way to explain why Splatoon had four people vote for it and Super Mario Maker had but 2 voters mention it. We’re not big on figuring out whether a game’s an expansion or standalone either. Attila only had two mentions, but fared superbly in other critic’s polls.

The entire unwieldy spreadsheet of our votes can be found here.

Thanks so much for participating and voting.

2

Thanks for the great work triggercut!

3

Yup, thanks for totting it up. Completely mystified at the top 3, haven’t played/not interested in 4-8, and 9-10 are good stuff. Interesting on Xcom scoring so well in the past, too. Here’s hoping Xcom 2 will do even better!

4

Thanks for the hard work! It’s very much appreciated.

5

Thanks for running the poll triggercut. It’s always fun voting and seeing the results.

6

So I guess I should probably try this Witcher thing, then?

-Tom

7

You may utterly hate it, but I’d still love to discuss and debate those points with you at some point.

I think that I’d agree with folks who find warts in the game in a variety of areas. I see them. I totally agree with those complaints.

For me, though, it kind of reminds me of how I react to Huckleberry Finn, my favorite novel. There are parts of that book–good sized parts of it, in fact–that just don’t work, where Sam Clemens seems to lose the thread quite a bit.

But…it’s the overall picture, the forest and not the trees, that’s what does it for me. I’ll trade that nonsense with the Duke and King and whatnot for “All right then, I’ll go to hell.” It’s a lopsided trade for how that makes me feel versus the other crap, to the point that I don’t care about the other crap at all, frankly. And that’s what the Witcher 3 is to me, I think. For what the game does give me, I’m thrilled to make the lopsided trade for some of the goofy mechanics.

And having said that, I totally get that the stuff that doesn’t work that well can be a barrier to entry that justifiably makes this game not work for folks.

8

Oh, and the year XCOM got 275 points, there were I think three or four games with over 150.

9

I have not played a single game in the top 10. Interesting…

10

Thanks for doing the hard work triggercut, look at that epic tie between Dying Light and Rocket League! :D

11

Thanks Triggercut! I’m glad to see Dying Light get some love, I felt it was a very underrated game this year.

12

If we had 10 picks instead of 5, both Splatoon and Xenoblade Chronicles X would have made my list. Just saying. ;)

13

Thanks for putting this together. Random stat I found interesting: Even with Witcher 3 getting such a high percentage of the overall vote, across 92 voters there were 130 games given consideration. Really speaks to the variety of tastes on Qt3 as well as the sheer quantity of good releases this year.

14

I’d love to hear Tom’s take on it some day, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t like it. Still, I’d be very interested in hearing what things did and didn’t work for him.

Tom! Set aside some of the mumbo-jumbo and carve out about 100 hours of your time for some Polish open-world fairytale remixes!

15

Good point. I forgot to complete my list in time, but would have been at least 131 if I did :).

16

I’ll echo the thanks to triggercut for organizing this. I didn’t vote as I felt I really didn’t play enough of any 2015 releases to make an informed opinion, so my vote would just be a “5 games I played for some time”.

Of the top 10 I played only Fallout 3 (a wee bit) and Pillars of Eternity (up until you get your lair, so not very long). I kept forgetting to return to PoE - I think I was waiting for it to be patched, and then it got hectic. It would probably have been on my best of list.

I did get Helldivers for christmas, and I’ve played it a bit multiplayer with my friends since then. I think it would probably have been my #1. A bit amazed that it is not on the top 20.

Did it get any votes at all, Triggercut?

17

Overtime!

Big up triggercut. Always fascinated by these sorts of polls so thanks for all the effort you put into sorting this.

18

Thanks for the number crunching, triggercut!

I’m impressed that the top 3 are all RPGs. While I’ve been playing primarily JRPGs for the past maybe 10 years, I grew up on the Ultimas, and have accumulated a sizable backlog library of WRPGs to play someday. That day is currently scheduled in very late 2016, after I finish Persona 5.

19

Yes, thank you, triggercut. Thanks for putting up the results too.

high five to Armando Penblade for putting down You Must Build a Boat :).

20

Nice work. Thanks Trig.