If anyone was still taking them seriously, they sure as hell aren’t now.
I think my favorite was the winner of the 2023 Labor of Love award: Red Dead Redemption 2, which hasn’t had a major content update since 2022.
I finally played through the RDR2 campaign a few months ago. The game is kinda a masterpiece and I wanted to vote for it when I saw it as an option. Then I remembered it came out 5 years ago and as far as I’ve heard from friends there’s nothing special about the online play.
Bit confused as to how it was even a candidate for the award lol
It became a candidate because nominations (and the votes) are all community based. Steam has the final say, but yeah, it’s the users who are driving this.
Yeah, it seems that at least two awards this year are the results of doing it for lulz :/
I mean, I don’t think that’s entirely a bad thing. At least it’s not gushing grannies mkII…
I played half of RDR2 a few months ago and as a game it is boring af. I don’t know how a game with such a bad quest design can get so much praise.
The world is gorgeous and I guess as a sandbox game there’s lot to do and even the story is alright but the quests are so boring and 80% the same. Couldn’t get myself to finish the game.
It really depends on what you’re looking for. A lot of people like that amazing sandbox with a decent story. The quests and “gotta get from A to B to finish this asap!” are secondary to it. They just want to get lost in the world and see how detailed and how much thought was put into the hunting, fishing, etc. if you’re a “gotta attack the story” type person, you probably won’t like it as much.
RDR2 took labor of love. I was hoping for DRG.
Hogwarts got an award (Best on Steam Deck). Hogwartz is not only politically odious but is just an open world with Potterverse assets, and takes place mostly in the swamp anyway.
Starfield got most innovative despite having the usual buggy-plus-banal that is the typical Bethesda formula. WTF?
So, okay, I’m a snob. And I’m disappointed with the Steam community.
How did rdr2 get labor of love? R* abandoned it. There was no new content for 3 years
I believe that was the point. Starfield and RDR2 winning awards were ironic AFAIK.
combination of irony votes and just being the most recognizable names on their lists.
Honestly, this one bothers me WAY more than Starfield. Sure, SF might not actually be a GOTY candidate, but the shipbuilding alone really is innovative. RDR2 was my JAM for a few years, but Rock$tar abandoned it like a red-headed stepchild!
Have you never heard of Kerbal Space Program?
Or Space Engineers? EVE Online? Elite Dangerous? Besieged if you play it very badly?Spaceships aren’t really new.
How did rdr2 get anything? It’s about 4 years old.
Innovative? Holy shit. It’s the most rehashed game of this year. It’s pretty much just FO4 in space with a ship builder and more load screens and procedurally generated planets.
I 100% completed hogwarts and loved the experience as a Harry Potter (not Rowling) fan. Gonna let it cook a bit and then come back when some more content comes out as it was a great chill game to play after work.
Also absolutely agree that DRG deserved labor of love. ROCK AND STONE!
God I miss the days when liking a work of art wasn’t automatically considered an endorsement of the person making it, even less so when the person in question is literally just the rights holder and had nothing to do with the product itself.
I get this, but when you’re talking about Rowling’s work (and some of the others) it becomes an issue for people of looking back at their work and going “oh, their views were blatantly spelled out here the entire time, I was just too young to notice it.” Plus, Rowling specifically said, in no uncertain terms, that every time somebody buys her stuff, she takes it as an endorsement of her beliefs and uses part of that money to fund groups that align with her beliefs.
With Hogwarts Legacy though, it wasn’t just the source material and Rowling, but also a case of some of the people working on the game who were putting stuff in that when looked at in context just made it more and more of a “okay, once or twice is a coincidence…but we’re up to 4 and I keep finding more” situation.
There was the fact that the lead game designer stepped down partway through the project. Why did he step down? Because it came out that he ran a right-wing extremist YouTube channel (that’s still up to this day afaik) with white supremacist views on full display. So he decided to step down to avoid the controversy it was starting to bring to the development of the game. But, when he stepped down, he made a statement about “feeling like he was among like-minded people on the team.”
So with that statement in mind, when the game came out, people began noticing…odd references in the game’s lore. Stuff like a goblin war horn lore object you can pick up that’s described as being used for battle and to “annoy wizards”, and has apparently been stuffed full of gorgonzola cheese. Well, people noticed that this horn looked oddly similar to a traditional Jewish horn used for battles and some religious ceremonies. Also, why gorgonzola? Apparently it’s one of the few non-kosher cheeses. So kinda weird, but could just be a coincidence, right? It was then that people noticed that there were references to other goblin rebellions that were put down by wizards with specific dates, and that these dates matched fairly well with several attempted genocides of Jews in medieval Europe. I think there were a few other items that referenced Jews as well in some capacity, but that’s all the stuff I can remember off the top of my head.
So even ignoring Rowling writing goblins as a Jewish stereotype (which is fairly easy because it seems like she just isn’t that creative when it comes to avoiding stereotypes. The black kid in the books is named Shacklebolt. The 14 year old Irish kid is obsessed with whiskey and explosives. How more on the nose can you get?), once you factor in the white supremacist in charge who referenced sharing similar views with other members of the dev team, and then you start seeing multiple references to Jews and events surrounding Jews in medieval European history (specifically attempted genocides), it goes from coincidence to red flags pretty quickly.
I’ve realised when playing that game that the people who made this world as attractive as I find it today, are those who did the designs for the films. A lot of the aesthethics and worldbuilding done outside of the orignal books is what actually makes it enjoyable in my opinion.
Some people have harder times separating an author from their work. In this particular case, while it is true that Rowling likely did not have much to do with the actual product, it also doesn’t help that she makes money off the game and donates said money to people and organizations that people disagree with.
There’s frankly no correlation between a single donor’s activity and societal changes in either direction on any one issue.
The UK has a huge TERF presence because it’s culturally essentialist on a fundamental level on all aspects of society.
It’s a country that enshrines hereditary peerage into law to this day, the concept of birthright and essential “stock” of an individual are central to their culture and that extends to gender.
Rowling can’t make it worse or better just by donating, she’s a symptom, not a cause.
I’m not trying to say that anyone buying the game is going to have a large impact or that Rowling herself has a large impact. I was just giving an explanation of why some people may feel like they shouldn’t support the game financially. Some people feel uncomfortable buying something if they know that their money, no matter how little, is ultimately going towards something they disagree with.
Sure, but that’s an argument against buying the game, not playing it or liking it.
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I don’t have a steam deck so wouldn’t know about that part.
It’s not the most innovative thing ever but it’s a solid game that is Harry Potter themed, that hasn’t come out in years, people have been asking for something of this quality for over a decade
The starfield and rdr2 ones are spite votes, obviously. Starfield is sitting at mostly negative for being shallow and repetitive and rdr2 was abandoned.
They’re meme votes.
Boaty McBoatface.
I appreciate this hypotheses so much.
I’ll be honest, it’s either this or I’ll jump off a roof tomorrow, cause a world where people earnestly think starfield is innovative is not a world compatible with my life.
I’ve been voting for DRG for years now and am hoping it wins at some point. Great game that still gets sizable updates.
Same, DRG has been getting better and raising their already high bar every year! They have regular content updates and you can just tell the developers give the game their best. Rdr2 while a great game, is undeserving of the labor of love award.
Rdr2 is a great game, but does NOT deserve labor of love.
I voted DRG as well, and I wholeheartedly believe it is more deserving of this award. Anyone who disagrees with me feel free to respond.
I firmly believe DRG didn’t win because rdr2 has a bigger player base.
Most innovative game of the year.
That is honestly hilarious
It’s not really funny though. Some group got their lulz, but that came at the cost of some actually deserving game not getting extra exposure it probably needed. It’s not a victimless crime.
I completely forgot that it was a user voted award. (Never a good idea imho) tbh I genuinely forgot all about said awards till this post
It’s a classic Boaty McBoatface situation. I fully expect at least one hentai game to win next year. 2024 being the US election year, trolls will have 12 months to practice.
boaty mcboatface was actually funny though. Internet polls being bad ideas isn’t funny anymore
I was surprised i could only nominate one of my nsfw games. Apparently it was only games from last year that were eligible? But then how did RDR2 get nominated? So confusing. All I know is I would have absolutely nominated some of my nsfw games, had I been able.
The Labour of Love is the only exception of the 2023 release rule, where older, still updated games should win.
How did Rdr2 and gta 5 win when they are the most milked r* games? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think we can make that work… Sex Chess anyone?
Valve should stop giving incentives for voting in the awards, it just leads to people voting for crap they know nothing about.
It won’t solve the entire issue but at least it’d be a start.
It literally just needs a N/A, or Undecided button.
Even if you didn’t play any game that qualifies for a category it just tells you to vote from a selection of games you’ve never heard of.
Can’t you vote for any game in any category?
The category was for VR and I didn’t play any VR games. I don’t see why people should be allowed to vote for games they never played in the first place.
Steam isn’t the only way to play games. They have no way of knowing.
people just choose what they recognize. also theres no option to skip an award for a category
You can just no answer but then you don’t get the free gacha prize, and let me tell you - people love free shit.
There is an option to skip…people just dont use it.
You mean by not voting in a category and still getting the chat emoji? Elaborate please.
There’s a chat emoji? I just didn’t vote in categories that I hadn’t played any game in.
Sadly, there was, for every category voted in. That was one of the reasons the results were subpar.
Not like the emojis were any good tbh.
Odd, I couldn’t find it and wanted to skip
I’m just sad it wasn’t Golum
That would have been great. The walking dead game too of Rick eating multiple shotgun blasts to his face deserved an award too.
I feel bad for Shadows of Doubt, the innovation award was the only one it was a candidate for and it got blocked by people poking fun at space Skyrim.
The horny robot game getting a style award over any of the amazing games that came out this year just crushes me.
Retrofuturism + consenticles fridge and dommy mummy robots beats most things to the sort of sad fucks that play games I guess?
I need a new hobby, unfortunately I too am a sad fuck.
I could never imagine being crushed by the results of a poll. Good luck to you
It wasn’t a matter of degree.
Play Disco Elysium. It’s a game for sad fucks.
Thanks for introducing the word “consenticles” to me.
What have I done…
But the artstyle is the one thing everyone agreed it was great at, after seeing some reviews I played it with an ammunition multiplier mod and it was much better, who thought that an action fps should be stingy with ammo was mad.
I played this on release when I had game pass. I didn’t really make it past the tutorial. It got so boring so quick. But the intro was interesting. If it had released that as a demo and then just never released it’d probably be better.
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Almost no VR gamer has ever even heard of the game that won best VR game.
I think most people voted for it as a joke.
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I simply don’t pay attention to game awards. I passively see people screaming about how srupid they are I smile and ignore it since I literally don’t give a single flying fuck about those awards. They’re an absolute fucking joke.
What is there to take seriously? It’s a community vote on what games people liked across various categories. If the outcome of the vote isn’t to your liking, accept that your opinion differs from them and move on. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.
