General gaming discussion

Best game is so subjective, they need to categorise them. For a start no grown adult can say Mario Wonder is one of the best games of the year. For a 7-12 year old, yes absolutely. Also speaking of BG3 as best game of the year is totally dependant on whether you enjoy the turn based RPG category, because if you don't then it's way down the list.

I've never played Genshin Impact but whenever I look at it, it fills me with disgust.

Thr bullshit, wasted time and energy that was generated over Hogwart's Legacy is the height of first world entitlement and hubris. The developers worked very hard to create a very polished game that was true to the source material. The noise merchants did nothing, created nothing, achieved nothing. They just sit there with their mouths open on their YouTube thumbnails like idiots, hoping for some fool to click on their shite.

Rant over.

It sold well, no doubt about it. Reviewed well? Sure, from a lot of the bigger sites that reviewed it a lot of the review scores came out about 8-9/10.

But you're talking about a 8-9/10 game in a year with numerous 10/10 games. It's genuinely one of the best years for gaming in years, possibly ever. Even taking the top 6 in the Game Awards GOTY discussion, if you increased that to 10 games, Hogwarts Legacy probably still wouldn't have made it in.

It's a game that had huge attention at launch, including the amount of people streaming it etc. A big chunk of that is down to the existing fanbase the Harry Potter world already had, but even outside of that a lot of people really enjoyed and loved the game.

And then it fell off an absolute cliff because as much as they enjoyed it, the game had no legs after the launch period. It didn't do anything which stuck in people's mind. It didn't do anything to warrant on-going conversation. It didn't do anything unique or interesting. It didn't really have anything innovative. And it didn't do those things in a year full of games which did.

I'm not saying it doesn't deserve to be in a top 50 list of games in the year. However we don't know how that list was collated. For example, if Polygon had their reviewers/editors etc do their individual top 10 games of the years then collated/weighted up those rankings, maybe it wasn't in enough of their top 10s to make it on the list. But it's a bit extreme to ask "when game awards become so disconnected from the gaming community then what's their point anymore?" This was one websites opinion on their top 50 games of the year. That's all. Even Keighley's Game Awards, they're scored by a huge amount of votes from people in the industry. They're all also part of the "gaming community". Just because something sold well and was pretty well received/reviewed doesn't mean the "gaming community" think it's one of the best games of the year. The "gaming community" have barely mentioned Hogwart's Legacy since about March, whereas there have been so many games released this year that the "gaming community" will be talking about and discussing for years.

I don’t know why anyone would expect a game that wasn’t reviewed by a publication to appear on their best of listing. If they chose to not review it they probably didn’t play it that much?

People make too much of these things anyway, as if a list of the best games is an objective thing.

I understand the point about the fact Polygon are a game journalism/review website and they didn't review that game, one of the biggest releases of the year. But it also just doesn't matter. They're one website. Funnily enough, the game managed to become the best-selling game of 2023 even without Polygon's review. Everyone who wanted to buy and play the game, did so. Everyone who enjoyed the game, did so.

One website decided to neither play nor review the game due to their own personal stances on an issue around the game. That's their decision and their right. But to throw this up as "game awards becoming disconnected from the gaming community", or "showing where we are with games journalism and reviewers" is just pure nonsense. Particularly when the game in question likely wouldn't have cracked their top ten anyway. It just doesn't matter.

I think the issue is they are expressing their opinion of the game based on politics surrounding the game which whatever your political stance I think we can all agree is awful journalism.

Yes, because they're subjective. Every review is entirely subjective regardless on how experienced the reviewer is, and each individual player will have their own opinion regardless of whatever any reviewer or even the general consensus of reviewers say. The outlets only provide information and then their own subjective thoughts and opinions. That's the way it has always been, in all forms of media/art.

"Gamers", are never a homogenous group. Some people do care about these outlets. Some don't. Some do sometimes. Some care about some outlets and trust basically the average opinion from those. Some people trust some reviewers where their opinions have generally aligned in the past, some trust other reviewers whose reviews remain more factual and informative rather than subjective opinions. Some may not trust any games media outlets and instead rely on advice from friends, even though those friends might have trusted those games outlets.

Reviews for new Avatar Game out. Currently 74 on metacritic and 72 on opencritic