The 'Game of the Year' Epidemic

 What's wrong with 'Complete Edition'?

Did you just release your game but still have some production budget left over? Consider the single most low effort and lazy move you possibly can to try and drum up some left over interest; release a 'Game of the Year' version of the game. It's as simple as slapping together the current version of the game into a single package, maybe shelling out for a new box-art package, and if not just getting a simple 'GOTY' stencil out. And from there you can pretty much get away with marketing fraud through lying to people that your game secured such critical acclaim that it was nominated above it's peers for a reward. Like writing a whole bunch of fake references for yourself to be nominated as a Professor; a simply harmless crime that no one is affected by- or is it?

Just this last month we've had two eye-brow raising announcements from high-profile games revealing their intention to wantonly lie to a buying public in the course of their game's life span by releasing 'Game of the Year' Editions. First is Far Cry 6, the latest game from the world's most washed-up AAA development company, which received the exact lukewarm and impressed general acclaim that it deserved for it's troubles. The second is the lamentable Cyberpunk 2077, a game which famously launched in an legendarily terrible state that encouraged Sony, of all companies, to facilitate refunds and pull the game off their store. A screw up the likes of which CDPR will have scarred on them for their entire careers. And a game which did not, crucially, win Game of the Year; regardless of how many of us tried to pre-emptively award one to them before the fall.

Now the excuse for a lot of companies who go this route with their game releases is: 'There's so many award shows and one of them gave us the Game of the Year' or 'We did get an award: for best pettable animal' or some such nonsense. A tongue-in-cheek way of avoiding marketing standards violations and avoid confronting responsibility like a remotely sensible adult. But what they never seem to really grasp is the fact that this is the very attitude which devalues the legitimacy of the video game field for every other sector of the entertainment industry. Like it or not, awards have sliding scales of significance and worth, an Oscar is worth more than a 'Critics choice award', even if it is in that vapid world in which 'Awards' exist. Which I think is part of the reason why Geoff Keighley sought to create his own official award show for the industry to recognise and respect in: The Game Awards.

The Game Awards are 'the Oscars' of gaming and they present a very clear candidate for what game should be eligible for a 'Game of the Year' branding chain. The 'Ultimate Game of the Year' award leaves little room for negotiation and misconstruction: it is awarded to the game that is considered the all round most significant achievement of game development for that year. It's a position that is influenced both by public appeal and a court of trusted critic partners. In other words, it is a position of sacred importance to the Keighley awards show, granted it's worth by the respect the community lays upon it. A respect simply spat upon by every big company who decides to co-opt the 'Game of the Year' title for their quick sales boost without caring about the cost this ultimately has.

Because let's be honest; culturally games are still a looked-down on medium from the outside. Despite it's size monetarily, there's not a serious art critic in the world that respects the work of video game developers because they consider it a lower art form. I've seen video game writers off-handily be written-off as not 'real writers', as if games are written by the script coders. And sure, there's probably a lot of hobbyist writers working on Indie projects, but does that make them anyless legitimate in the profession? What regulatory body of literature has to 'recognise' you before you suddenly become a 'real writer'? And you see that perception spread everywhere. Voice actors have had that stigma for decades now, carrying over from the beginnings of cartoons; unless you're a fingers-in-the-code engineer, you're largely considered a facsimile of a much more legitimate and revered profession as it's expressed in other fields. That's because no respectable outsider takes games seriously.

And it seems we don't bother take it seriously either. If there's no level of standards being enforced or respected for our own revered awards, isn't that kind of like saying none of these awards are worth being taken seriously? That they're part of an industry that shouldn't be taken seriously? If 'Game of the Year' has no value, then by comparison 'Oscar Award Winner' could be used as a white-lie CV buffer because you bumped into a guy who said he loved in a movie one time. (Maybe that guy's name was Oscar; you can't say otherwise!) I roll my eyes at the ceremony of award shows as much as anyone but it's impossible to deny that the impact they have has weight and purpose. When you hear of an Oscar Award winning actor, you assume that actor has expert handling of material with weight. When you hear 'Game of the Year', you think "Oh, I guess this team has a spare 50k for a re-release."

This past game awards saw the coveted and hallowed title be awarded to Elden Ring, of all games; but do you think that's really going to stop God of War releasing a 'Game of the year' Edition? Maybe, maybe not. And I know that in the eyes of the marketing team it's utterly harmless; we all know they mean "This is the version with all the DLC and stuff thrown in; pick it up now"; but companies have managed to find ways around plain lying to people! Fallout New Vegas has it's 'Ultimate Edition', Assassin's Creed has coined the team 'Complete Edition', because that franchise will never being seeing the light of an awards show after how much those developers fell off. There are alternatives. Does it sound as impressive as announcing that your game was the single best received of the year it came out in? No, but nor should it. That's a sash you should have to earn to wear!

But there are dozens of award bodies in gaming, I hear you say. What makes Geoff Keighley's 'Ultimate Game of the Year' award any more legitimate than any of the others?  Effort and passion and collaboration with the entire community. Any two-bit rag can throw it's worthless opinion piece where it wants to, but only the Game Awards reaches out to critics, and respected industry figures and then throws us the last 10% of the vote in a pity-play. Only the Game Awards are elected by a committee of everyone, making the Ultimate Winner the champion of all hearts, overall. I don't think there is any other award body in gaming, in any entertainment industry that I can think of, which attempts to bring everyone together like that... (except for Strictly Come Dancing; but that shows rigged, obviously.) It's about time someone laid a standard of use down on the most affluential title in gaming, and give that badge it's sheen again.