RPGWatch - Official Game of the Decade Voting

[Myrthos]

@Myrthos;, how many watchers usually participate in the GOTY votes?

What lackblogger said

 

[Cacheperl]

Maybe there should be a reward for voting. Like even bigger avatar sizes.

Or punishment for not voting. Like being forced to run the next GotD vote.

Or both.

Both sounds good.

 

[GothicGothicness]

I am still trying to figure out how to vote

 

[forgottenlor]

I didn't submit anything as currently I don't have enough of willpower to browse through almost a thousand of titles then make some picks.

60 is not enough for a perfect list. A perfect list would be the one if all people on this planet voted so we're absolutely sure there is no statistical error.

Dunno if I said it before, I need an answer to a question acquaintances sometimes ask me "Just finished this and that RPG, what's also great to play next, any suggestion?".
We'll, hopefully, receive exactly the answer on that one as a list here, thus I can always pass it around.
Will a game that some would subjectivelly place at #1 be at #10 or some other spot on the list, doesn't matter as long as it's in there.

But Joxer, surely the game on your best of the decade list would be ones that were very memorable. Ones that you smile when you think of playing them. If you look how others are voting all you need to do is think of somewhere between 1 and 20 games that you remember really enjoying and check if they were made after 2010.

 

[JFarrell71]

My top 20, roughly in order:

1) The Witcher 3
2) Skyrim
3) Torment: Tides of Numenera
4) Dark Souls (series)
5) Fallout: New Vegas
6) Sunless Seas
7) Divinity: Original Sin II
8) Pillars of Eternity I (w/ White March)
9) Shadowrun: Dragonfall (and series)
10) The Witcher 2
11) Dragon Age: Inquisition
12) Disco Elysium
13) Dragon Quest XI
14) Sunless Skies
15) Battletech
16) The Outer Worlds
17) Wasteland 2
18) West of Loathing
19) Thea: The Awakening
20) Yakuza 0

I did not vote for re-releases of games that were orginally created and published in previous decades. so that ruled out a whole host of games (Planescape: Torment, BG2, Tales of Vesperia, FFIX, many others.)

I also mostly avoided games that don't fit my defintion of an RPG, though there are a couple on my list that are borderline (Battletech, Thea and Yakuza), and that ruled out another huge list of favorites (Prey, Dishonored, XCOM, etc)

 

[ilm]

But Joxer, surely the game on your best of the decade list would be ones that were very memorable. Ones that you smile when you think of playing them. If you look how others are voting all you need to do is think of somewhere between 1 and 20 games that you remember really enjoying and check if they were made after 2010.

Heck, even 3 games are fine. I just merged all mentioned games in this thread and culled it from there. Don't overthink your picks either.

 

[wolfgrimdark]

I am not sure why people are voting for so many when it says game of the decade not games of the decade.

 

[ilm]

Because that will only work with many voters? With only 60 voters a more detailed list of games leads to a more accurate result I suppose. Although the varying sizes of those lists between people could lead to bias. I'm sure lackblogger figured it all out

 

[Kordanor]

Perhaps 'balance' was not the word I should have used. I don't mean to hijack the thread, and it's been years since I've played it, but… I took to making my own gear fairly early, maxing the skill, and was able to easily kill dragons barely halfway through the game. At the time I felt the challenge had disappeared and it became solely a story-driven game for me-- which is fine, but unfortunately the story didn't engage me enough to keep plodding along in depressing winterscape.

Yep, I am completely with you there. Skyrim was a decent game, but you really had to give your best to suck and make this game somewhat challenging. As soon as you train your professions, which inevitably caused an exponential gain in power, the game became a sight seeing tour. I tried my best to avoid this, but at some point you just got to train something and thats also when I lost interest.
To be fair, I had fun in most of the ~170h I played it. But me not finishing a game is also a rarity and a bad sign.

 

[crpgnut]

To someone who thinks combat is for the weak-minded, Skyrim offered a great many hours of role-playing instead of killing. I didn't care if I was OP because fighting was 99th on my list of things that I care about in playing a role. I was a miner, an alchemist, a mage student, a homeowner, an interior decorator, a barbie dress up artist, a dude running around with a blue cat and his girlfriend, etc. I was also a dude who had a dragon for a mentor, which was a first.

I also give Skyrim massive credit for allowing me to mod the hell out of the game and it still load up. Was that modders? Yep. Who made the game mod-able though..yep. Game of the decade easy. Game of my life, so far, also easy.

Unless we add in MMO games, Skyrim also sold more copies than most of the rest of the titles…combined. I confess to being impressed by capitalism though.

 

[Drithius]

which edition

 

[Morrandir]

Because that will only work with many voters? With only 60 voters a more detailed list of games leads to a more accurate result I suppose.

The only thing you get is a a better result for the rear positions in the final list which I'd argue aren't that important. This is a vote for the game of the decade, not for the top 100 of the decade.

Although the varying sizes of those lists between people could lead to bias. I'm sure lackblogger figured it all out

I wouldn't call it a bias but rather wasted votes.
I assume lackblogger will give each voter the same voting weight. So if the first voter votes for two games, each game gets a weight of 0.5. If the second votes for 20 games without specifying weights, every game gets 0.05. So the actual favorite game of the second voter gets only 10% of the weight compared to the first voter.
That's why I guess long lists don't make sense from a voter's perspective.

However I could be wrong and @lackblogger; counts each game mention equally. Then… ehm… I'd vote again.

 

[Kordanor]

The only thing you get is a a better result for the rear positions in the final list which I'd argue aren't that important. This is a vote for the game of the decade, not for the top 100 of the decade.

I wouldn't call it a bias but rather wasted votes.
I assume lackblogger will give each voter the same voting weight. So if the first voter votes for two games, each game gets a weight of 0.5. If the second votes for 20 games without specifying weights, every game gets 0.05. So the actual favorite game of the second voter gets only 10% of the weight compared to the first voter.
That's why I guess long lists don't make sense from a voter's perspective.

That wouldn't make much sense, especially if you vote with priorities. Why should your top priority game receive less weight, than someone elses, just because (s)he didn't bother to check for other games as well.

 

[lackblogger]

it says game of the decade not games of the decade.

I assume

Quoting from the OP:

Imagine your own personal Games of the Decade list and PM it to lackblogger.

 

[Morrandir]

Quoting from the OP:

Hm... that doesn't really answer the implied question. Or I'm too stupid to understand.

How do you weigh votes that had been given as a sorted list if no weighting had been specified?

 

[Myrthos]

How do you weigh votes that had been given as a sorted list if no weighting had been specified?

I think we should leave that with lackblogger. I don't think a discussion on the process used is going to help as their will always be people with a better idea (or worst idea) on how to solve it.
Besides that, it is not like we are going to decide once and for all what the GotD is going to be. We end up with a list. if someone else would do the work, it could be a different list, because of a different way of processing the input.

For me, that is perfectly fine. We just end up with a list, debate it, (dis)agree with it, @felipepepe can say he is disappointed with us again and all is well

 

[lackblogger]

I can't answer that as I don't know myself yet.

The best way to avoid people attempting to game the charts instead of just playing the game properly and telling me what games they'd like to see in the charts is to not provide any hints as to the calculation method.

And the best way to prevent me from giving any hints is for me to not know the algorithm beforehand anyway.

 

[Morrandir]

A sounds like good strategy.

But the question of "what games they'd like to see in the charts" is a different one from "what game is the best game of the decade". I thought we were doing the latter.

 

[lackblogger]

Hence people are free to apply as much weighting as they like to their picks…

"I liked XYZ game most, but I also wouldn't mind if XYZ games won" kinda-thing.

 

[Morrandir]

I understand, but with loose specifications and rules I fear that votes will be interpreted not the way the voters intended.

But I shouldn't talk about it that much. It's not a big deal, I don't care if "my games" win. I'm happy and thankful that you're organizing this vote.