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Time Magazine Top 10 Best Video Games of 2021

Abriael_GN

RSI Employee of the Year
I trust journalist more for the simple fact that they are submitting votes as a conglomerate. Meaning that it is a number of opinions being weighed per outlet, which helps combat platform or genre bias. Not only that but they all around have more access to more platforms then the typical gamer that will fight for the two games that released specifically on the platform they own.

That's a pretty ludicrous standpoint. user-voted awards include a much wider variety of opinions, platform setups, and points of view, in massively bigger numbers, meaning that their statistical value is objectively much higher. And if you think journalists aren't platform fanboys and don't let their favorite platform influence their judgment, you really don't know many journalists. 😂

You’re generalizing and saying they don’t know the japanese gaming industry exist and then exclude Nintendo from your harsh take makes no sense. Maybe they excluded Tales simply because they don’t like JRPGs?

It's almost like you think "I don't like JRPGs" makes for a good justification for excluding a JRPG from a GOTY list.

And no. I'm not generalizing. If you look at these mainstream outlets' coverage, you'll see that their interest in the Japanese gaming industry doesn't go beyond very few among the biggest and well-known brands. All you gotta do to gauge their expertise is to click on their names and see what they usually write about. That can tell you a lot about the value of their GOTY judgment (which in this case is pretty literally zero. This is literally a bunch of randos that write about games very occasionally).
 
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Fredrik

Member
It's almost like you think "I don't like JRPGs" makes for a good justification for excluding a JRPG from a GOTY list.
Not at all but I don’t think all genres have an equal chance to get a GOTY award. Comes from being a popularity contest, and from people having a preference, no matter the quality of the game a majority of the voting jury must’ve played and liked a game for it to get a GOTY award. That essentially means that JRPGs will have a lower chance. Goes for strategy games too, simulators, even racing games, likely even some platform exclusives on less popular platforms, like Oculus Quest exclusives, or Apple Arcade exclusives like the Fantasian (which I personally liked a ton, feels like old school FF, looks lovely). It is what it is. Don’t be mad, just be glad when your own favorites end up at the top.

And no. I'm not generalizing. If you look at these mainstream outlets' coverage, you'll see that their interest in the Japanese gaming industry doesn't go beyond very few among the biggest and well-known brands. All you gotta do to gauge their expertise is to click on their names and see what they usually write about. That can tell you a lot about the value of their GOTY judgment (which in this case is pretty literally zero. This is literally a bunch of randos that write about games very occasionally).
Fair enough. It’s quite a bit different to say they only look at the biggest and well-known brands than saying they don’t know the japanese gaming industry exist. That explanation is better. 👍
 

Abriael_GN

RSI Employee of the Year
Not at all but I don’t think all genres have an equal chance to get a GOTY award. Comes from being a popularity contest, and from people having a preference, no matter the quality of the game a majority of the voting jury must’ve played and liked a game for it to get a GOTY award. That essentially means that JRPGs will have a lower chance. Goes for strategy games too, simulators, even racing games, likely even some platform exclusives on less popular platforms, like Oculus Quest exclusives, or Apple Arcade exclusives like the Fantasian (which I personally liked a ton, feels like old school FF, looks lovely). It is what it is. Don’t be mad, just be glad when your own favorites end up at the top.


Fair enough. It’s quite a bit different to say they only look at the biggest and well-known brands than saying they don’t know the japanese gaming industry exist. That explanation is better. 👍

It may be slight hyperbole, but if one knows only Nintendo, Final Fantasy, and Resident Evil, I think it's quite fair to say that they lack the perception of the Japanese gaming industry required to consider 99% of its products for any fair judgement in any kind of ranking.

I agree that not all genres have an equal chance to get GOTY awards. The point is that they should.

I don't really care whether my favorites get at the top or not. My favorites are very niche, so they almost never do. I do find irritating that Game of the Year awards are absolutely overrated in the year-end discussion, especially when they come from people lacking any kind of expertise on the subject matter. That's why the only GOTY awards that I consider relevant are user-voted.
 
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Man, 2021 was a terrible year if that's the top 10. Looks pretty much the same as all the other outlets too which should tell you the kind of degenerate sycophants populate each outlets gaming section.
 

Gen X

Trust no one. Eat steaks.
Geez that's pretty generous for FH5 considering it's almost exactly the same game as the last 2 with a different location and that it still has the same mp issues as previous installments. I'm sure there's plenty of other games that could've been in its place.
 

Fredrik

Member
I agree that not all genres have an equal chance to get GOTY awards. The point is that they should.
100% agree there. But how should that be achieved?

User polls means a game on a bigger platform will have a higher chance to win than a game on a smaller platform since it’ll automatically get more votes.

Big media critics polls means politics might affect the result, and jaded critics rushing through a game to not miss a review embargo date will have a different view on a game than a user that can see everything and won’t play a janky game without patches.

Also, people have different taste in games, I’d say it’s impossible to get a 100% fair GOTY voting. I love metroidvanias, favorite genre by far, and Metroid Dread is the best game I’ve played in the genre since Super Metroid. I don’t see how any other game could’ve bumped it down to second place for me.
Meanwhile I have no idea if the latest FIFA is GOTY material since I never play sports games.

So how can it ever be fair? Should all who vote for the GOTY be required to play all games and be required to own all platforms? It’s not an easy equation to solve.
 

Abriael_GN

RSI Employee of the Year
User polls means a game on a bigger platform will have a higher chance to win than a game on a smaller platform since it’ll automatically get more votes.

Halo Infinite just won the User-voted GOTY at The Game Awards. I expect it to win a bunch more.
 
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Lognor

Banned
No tales of arise = not even taking this list seriously
You might be the first person I've seen say Tales of Arise should be goty. I read it was a pretty bog standard jrpg. For jrpgs this year, I would think SMT V should be at the top of that list.
 

Fredrik

Member
Halo Infinite just won the User-voted GOTY at The Game Awards. I expect it to win a bunch more.
Yup, and it’s on Steam, Windows Store, XB1, XSX, XSS and Xcloud.

I’m not downplaying that win, it’s cool that it happened since it missed the real voting because of that dumb november cut off date.

But the player numbers are probably mighty fine for that title, and it helps, it’s just the nature of player polls. A big userbase means the likelyhood that someone voting has actually bothered playing a game is higher.

For a game with a small userbase to do well in player polls it needs a higher percentage of people loving the game. It’s not an impossible thing but then it really needs to attract the demographic that bother go voting.

Imagine Returnal winning the players choice award with like 500k sold copies. That would be a bigger thing than the GOTY award itself, would mean most, or at least a huge chunk, of those who played it also thought it was the best game of the year.
 
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Abriael_GN

RSI Employee of the Year
Imagine Returnal winning the players choice award with like 500k sold copies.

It sold 500,000 copies because not as many people liked it or cared for it. Hence, it should not be game of the year.

Vox populi, vox dei.

As I mentioned before, the only category that can truly decide in a fair way what the "game of the year" is, is the people for whom the games are made, and that pay for them.

No category is perfect, but none is more statistically relevant than the largest (by far), which also involves the widest range of tastes, cultures, and points of view. A bunch of dudes who happen to write stuff is infinitesimally less relevant from a statistical point of view and from the point of view of the variety of tastes, while coming with exactly the same limitations (and more).
 
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tommib

Member
It sold 500,000 copies because not as many people liked it or cared for it. Hence, it should not be game of the year.

Vox populi, vox dei.

As I mentioned before, the only category that can truly decide in a fair way what the "game of the year" is, is the people for whom the games are made, and that pay for them.

No category is perfect, but none is more statistically relevant than the largest (by far), which also involves the widest range of tastes, cultures, and points of view. A bunch of dudes who happen to write stuff is infinitesimally less relevant from a statistical point of view and from the point of view of the variety of tastes, while coming with exactly the same limitations (and more).
There’s a lot of wrong here. Not sure where to begin.

Many, many games were not a mainstream success when they were released for various reasons and eventually became incredibly influential and gained importance over time. Demon’s Souls comes to mind as a game that was misunderstood even by Sony during launch and slowly gained momentum until getting Gamespot’s GOTY - and it couldn’t have been a better choice retrospectively.

Allowing metrics of sales to dictate quality evaluation doesn’t translate well into awarding games.

Game awards are either attributed by other game developers and/or journalists/critics. Undermining the importance of people who work on games or write about them professionally and academically is a pure anti-intelectual reaction and serves no other purpose than to lower standards to the lowest common denominator: sales and popular opinion.

Lets not pretend the most financially successful music artists of the year or films of the year aren’t most of the time pure trite. Game awards have actually been able to circumvent this and have allowed less popular titles to shine - games that sometimes are just ahead of the curve or too left-field for the masses to digest. Wanting to get rid of this doesn’t sound healthy in my opinion.
 
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Fredrik

Member
It sold 500,000 copies because not as many people liked it or cared for it. Hence, it should not be game of the year.

Vox populi, vox dei.

As I mentioned before, the only category that can truly decide in a fair way what the "game of the year" is, is the people for whom the games are made, and that pay for them.

No category is perfect, but none is more statistically relevant than the largest (by far), which also involves the widest range of tastes, cultures, and points of view. A bunch of dudes who happen to write stuff is infinitesimally less relevant from a statistical point of view and from the point of view of the variety of tastes, while coming with exactly the same limitations (and more).
I kinda agree but not quite.

I use Steam reviews a ton to see if a game is good because you can filter out troll reviews with no playtime and the stats constantly evolves when new patches arrives. So users view on games are very important imo.

But for awards it’ll only take 6% voters of a 10mil game to make it impossible for a 500k game to win even if everyone who played the smaller one vote for it.
 

Abriael_GN

RSI Employee of the Year
There’s a lot of wrong here. Not sure where to begin.

Many, many games were not a mainstream success when they were released for various reasons and eventually became incredibly influential and gained importance over time. Demon’s Souls comes to mind as a game that was misunderstood even by Sony during launch and slowly gained momentum until getting Gamespot’s GOTY - and it couldn’t have been a better choice retrospectively.

Allowing metrics of sales to dictate quality evaluation don’t translate well into awarding games.

Game awards are either attributed by other game developers and/or journalists/critics. Undermining the importance of people who work on games or write about them professionally and academically is a pure anti-intelectual reaction and serves no other purpose than to lower standards to the lowest common denominator: sales and popular opinion.

Lets not pretend the most financially successful music artists of the year or films of the year aren’t most of the time pure trite. Game awards have actually been able to circumvent this and have allowed less popular titles to shine - games that sometimes are just ahead of the curve or too left-field for the masses to digest. Wanting to get rid of this doesn’t sound healthy in my opinion.

This is based on the theory that game "critics" know better than anyone else what makes a good game.

And as a professional game journalist who has done the job both on print and web for over 20 years (and interacted directly with more people in the business than I can remember), few theories could be more naive and simply wrong than that.

A game doesn't just need to be financially successful to be voted game of the year by a large audience of gamers. Those who bought it also need to have liked it enough to want to vote it as their game of the year. There are plenty of financially successful games that people simply don't end up loving.

Thinking that a small bunch of self-elected "intellectuals" or elites knows better than the collective wisdom of thousands of potentially millions of gamers about something as simple as entertainment is as ridiculous as it comes. 😂

Judging whether a game is enjoyable and memorable or not isn't rocket science.
 
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tommib

Member
This is based on the theory that game "critics" know better than anyone else what makes a good game.

And as a professional game journalist who has done the job both on print and web for over 20 years (and having interacted directly with more in the business than I can easily remember), few theories could be more naive and simply wrong than that.

A game doesn't just need to be financially successful to be voted game of the year by an audience of gamers. Those who bought it also need to have liked it enough to want to vote it as their game of the year.

Thinking that a small bunch of self-elected "intellectuals" or elites knows better than the collective wisdom of thousands of potentially millions of gamers about something as simple as entertainment is as ridiculous as it comes. 😂

Judging whether a game is enjoyable and memorable or not isn't rocket science.
Like I said, your basis is an anti-intelectual one. I for one trust the people much less than professional writers and other game devs. Maybe you’re thinking that GAF is a representation of the popular opinion. But it’s not. It’s as insular as it gets.

As someone who studied film history, the groundbreaking and memorable stuff a lot of times didn’t resonate with the public but critics could see what was going on behind the curtains. Why? Because they were indeed smarter and intellectual - your deadly enemies!
 
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Abriael_GN

RSI Employee of the Year
Like I said, your basis is an anti-intelectual one. I for one trust the people much less than professional writers and other game devs. Maybe you’re thinking that GAF is a representation of the popular opinion. But it’s not. It’s as insular as it gets.

As someone who studied film history, the groundbreaking and memorable stuff a lot of times didn’t resonate with the public but critics could see what was going on behind the curtains. Why? Because they were indeed smarter and intellectual - your deadly enemies!

No. My basis is simple experience, and having interacted directly for over 20 years with likely more gaming journalists from all over the world and from all sub-categories of journalism (from 100% mainstream to nichest of the niche) than you'd be able to name. Expertise about games figures very low in the list of skills that let people land a gaming journalism job nowadays, even more so at the bigger outlets, let alone at mainstream general press ones like Time Magazine.

And trying to distort my point of view as something completely unrelated as "enemies" only shows that you know that your argument is weak, so you have to resort to strawman arguments. Gaming journalism is full of great people, but that doesn't make them any more viable to judge whether game is good or great than any experienced gamer.

It's genuinely hilarious that someone still has this rose-tinted idea of the average gaming journalist as some sort of actual "smarter" (😂😂😂😂😂) "expert" who knows any better than any dedicated gamer. It may have had some semblance of merit 20 years ago, but most definitely not now.
 
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tommib

Member
No. My basis is simple experience, and having interacted directly for over 20 years with likely more gaming journalists from all over the world and from all sub-categories of journalism (from 100% mainstream to nichest of the niche) than you'd be able to name. Expertise about games figures very low in the list of skills that let people land a gaming journalism job nowadays, even more so at the bigger outlets, let alone at mainstream general press ones like Time Magazine.

And trying to distort my point of view as something completely unrelated as "enemies" only shows that you know that your argument is weak, so you have to resort to strawman arguments. Gaming journalism is full of great people, but that doesn't make them any more viable to judge whether game is good or great than any experienced gamer.

It's genuinely hilarious that someone still has this rose-tinted idea of the average gaming journalist as some sort of actual "smarter" (😂😂😂😂😂) "expert" who knows any better than any dedicated gamer. It may have had some semblance of merit 20 years ago, but most definitely not now.
I don’t understand how you struggle to see the relevancy of critics at a time when the industry is cancelling or giving the go-ahead for titles depending on metacritic scores. Games live or die their by critic scores. If critics weren’t perceived as more knowledgeable or better equipped to articulate their perceptions - which is your whole premise - then critic scores would be totally irrelevant and mocked. You can see from the thousands of threads here and the industry’s reactions to these numbers that that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Adding several laughing emojis to your rationale doesn’t help it. As someone who worked in the industry, you’re coming off as a puzzled and bitter has-been.
 
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Kagey K

Banned
Geez that's pretty generous for FH5 considering it's almost exactly the same game as the last 2 with a different location and that it still has the same mp issues as previous installments. I'm sure there's plenty of other games that could've been in its place.
I look forward to your same energy criticizing all sequels going forward.
 

Boss Mog

Member
For me, game of the year is Tales of Arise, I can't believe that it hasn't won any yet. The PS5 version, which is the one I played, sits at 87 metacritic receiving tons of praise from "journalists" and gamers alike.
 

kurisu_1974

is on perm warning for being a low level troll
I'm getting more and more out of the loop as I get older... I mean I played and loved a lot of games this year, just not the ones that get any awards it looks like...


MSmsxR9.png
 
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mckmas8808

Banned
Latest GOTY counts (including Time Magazine):

  • It Takes Two- 13
    • Media Outlets: 13 | Readers' Choice: 0
  • Resident Evil Village- 11
    • Media Outlets: 7 | Readers' Choice: 4
  • Deathloop- 10
    • Media Outlets: 9 | Readers' Choice: 1
  • Metroid Dread - 7
  • Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart - 6
  • Forza Horizon 5 - 5
  • Returnal - 4
  • Halo Infinite - 3
  • Psychonauts 2 - 3
  • Halo Infinite (multiplayer) - 2
  • Inscryption - 2
  • Shin Megami Tensei V - 2
  • Before Your Eyes - 1
  • Death's Door - 1
  • Far Cry 6 - 1
  • Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy - 1
  • Monster Hunter Rise - 1
  • Out of Line - 1
  • The Artful Escape - 1
  • Cyberpunk 2077 (PC Version only) - 1 (counted toward 2020)
  • Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - 1 (counted toward 2020)


I really need to play RE8 and Returnal huh?
 
Latest GOTY counts (including Time Magazine):

  • It Takes Two- 13
    • Media Outlets: 13 | Readers' Choice: 0
  • Resident Evil Village- 11
    • Media Outlets: 7 | Readers' Choice: 4
  • Deathloop- 10
    • Media Outlets: 9 | Readers' Choice: 1
  • Metroid Dread - 7
  • Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart - 6
  • Forza Horizon 5 - 5
  • Returnal - 4
  • Halo Infinite - 3
  • Psychonauts 2 - 3
  • Halo Infinite (multiplayer) - 2
  • Inscryption - 2
  • Shin Megami Tensei V - 2
  • Before Your Eyes - 1
  • Death's Door - 1
  • Far Cry 6 - 1
  • Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy - 1
  • Monster Hunter Rise - 1
  • Out of Line - 1
  • The Artful Escape - 1
  • Cyberpunk 2077 (PC Version only) - 1 (counted toward 2020)
  • Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - 1 (counted toward 2020)

I had it takes two as GOTY when I first played it...glad to see its doing so well...game is a masterpiece and sets the standard for CO-OP. RE villiage winning goty is kind of embarassing...hopefully its only horror game sites.
 
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