Welcome, folks, to the 5th annual Official Unofficial Quarter to Three Awards!
Edit: —===> Final results are in! <===—
Summary: we’re gonna do this same as last year, with two primary differences: a) what was last year’s nomination process is this year’s whole shebang (ie, no runoffs after we compile our list of winners), and b) your voting power will be determined by your postcount in the Games forum only (sorry, Jason :), rather than the board on the whole.
No separate PC/console/handheld/web flashgame/whatever divisions – it’s video game vs. video game, regardless of platform or delivery method.
Voting Procedure
Any account created on or before December 15, 2010 is eligible to vote. You may vote for as many games as you want.
Titles should have been released in 2010 to be counted. (Significant expansions or add-ons are acceptable, provided they came out in '10).
To vote for a game:
- Look the game up on MobyGames, and copy the title exactly as it appears there. If it’s not listed on MobyGames, use the title as it appears on the game’s homepage.
Why? Because nominations will be tallied up by an extremely literal Python script that won’t understand that Call of Duty: Black Ops, CoD:BO, and BlOps are the same game.
(Alternately, just copy 'n paste it from other people’s posts and/or the preliminary tallies that I’ll be posting while voting is open)
- Post the games you wish to vote for in this thread, with each game title on its own line, in boldface. For example:
K.C. Munchkin!
Pinball Construction Set
Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress
If you choose to add commentary to your picks, feel free, but put it after the titles, and don’t use any boldface in your post other than the game titles themselves. e.g.:
K.C. Munchkin!
Pinball Construction Set – I don’t see how anyone can EVER make a better pinball sim than this!
Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress – this game was great; I wonder if there will be a sequel?
Scoring (you don’t have to know how this works to vote)
Each vote you make will be scored thusly:
vote score = (square_root(games_postcount) + qt3_membership_in_months) / number_of_votes
IE, you get “vote points” equal to the square-root of your postcount in the games forum only, plus the length of time you’ve been a QT3 member in months; these points are distributed evenly to the games you vote for.
At the end of the voting period, I will tally up our final list of sixteen QT3 Game of the Year Finalists, with the top scorer earning the overall QT3 Game of the Year crown. (Why sixteen? 'Cause it made for some really fun jockeying for position last year; so, keeping at the same number, even though we’re not feeding a single-elimination runoff afterwards this time)
Notes
If you wish to add/remove a game from your nomination list as voting progresses, edit your initial post – any games you list in any post will count towards your totals. And no, you can’t cheat by listing a game multiple times, it’ll only get counted once.
This method is most definitely intended to encourage vote-shifting as things progress – if you need to alter your votes to keep a favorite title on the charts, by all means, do so. This is a games forum, after all, it’s only appropriate we make a game out of our voting. (That said, please keep voting to your primary account – stay in the spirit of things, don’t try and break the system outright; I reserve the right to tweak the rules and/or scoring if blatant abuses crop up)
It’s safe to quote other people’s posts, game titles included – the vote tally-upper will ignore anything that’s in a quote block.
Voting will be open through midnight, December 31, 2010. Will your favorite game make the Top Sixteen? Vote now!
(thanks to stusser for running my database query to get the games forum postcounts, and to Tom for giving the OK to do so :)