Dear deity of expletive choice.

Game of the year : yes.
Role playing game awards : shouldn't you be fetching the mead?

I don't know...it's sort of a tradition for TES games to recieve GOTY, but I still think it deserved it (definitely in the top 3). I say wait for the DLCs.

Portal 2 was my GOTY, but Skyrim was a close second.

Arkham City came out this year, didn't it deserve it far more, considering it was Mark Hammil final performance of the Joker?

A game's quality isn't increased by the platforms it's available on.

Depends on the venue. If it's Spike's VGAs then yes they are a joke, they whole this is one big joke. However if it's any half decent venue then it's something to consider when it hands out an award.


Personally I think it deserved all the praise and GOTY awards it received. There where a handful of other games that I thought deserved GOTY awards such as Portal 2, The Withcer 2, or Uncharted 3. Granted I didn't get around to playing games like Skyward Sword or Dues Ex but never the less most games that get GOTY awards deserve them.

I haven't been able to bring myself to play any other game since I bought it at launch... Oblivion was probably the last game that captured my attention for this long. Easily deserves GOTY!

Deserved to be in the running but should not have won due to it being broken on one platform.Best game i played of 2011 was The Witcher 2 if it was on consoles at the time it may have been in the running,in saying that the GOTY award is a joke.

Arkham City and Deus Ex: Human Revolution were both better games. So... no.

"Not major enough", "occasional glitch"... This game has completely unacceptable bugs that damn right take you away from the enjoyment of playing, because they prevent you from playing at all. Let's make this clear, Skyrim does not have just some minor issues, it has really serious bugs that should have never, ever made it all the way to the store shelves. From disappearing save files to constant crashes and specific locations locked inside freezing firewalls that prevent you from ever visiting them again. That happens.

I don't want to get into an argument about this again, because lately it feels like all my posts are just about performance issues and it gets tiring, but it just blows my mind how easily people award this game the best of the year as if nothing was wrong with it. Yes, it is a terrific game, but bugs just cannot be ignored like that. It's like giving the Oscar for best feature to a film that has half its footage burned out and scratched, but other than that is a wonderful movie. And now don't give me the 'well, not everyone experiences bugs' excuse, because the game should work fine for everybody, or what are we doing here? playing lottery?

Really, awesome game. One of the best of many years without a doubt. But to me, technical performance counts quite a lot when deciding whether something is the greatest or not.

I gotta be brutally honest, I think awards shows felt pressured to hand Skyrim GOTY without question.

Skyrim had MASSIVE hype leading up to it's release, upon release PS3 players quickly had massive complaints (the game being unplayable) and the game was released only one month before many of the GOTY awards ceremonies. And it still won? GTFO.

I love Skyrim, but honestly think that Portal 2, The Witcher 2 and deus ex: human revolution deserved it more. All those games were far more polished both gameplay and graphics wise and felt as though they were "complete". Skyrim can look and play amazingly some moments, but there are also many moments where it looks and plays terribly and feels like features were cut or rushed.

I REALLY hope for the next one they either ditch gamebryo entirely, or at least just go through and redo/fix all the problems with it, rather than just trying to cover the problems up and piling more stuff on top of old broken stuff. I remember arguing with people before Skyrim's release who said it was a "brand new engine" and just looking at it and knowing it was still gamebryo with a minor facelift. Sometimes I look at Valve and Beth and imagine what they could achieve with a better game engine, I seriously wonder how much money and time is wasted developing with terrible tools on a hacky engine.

oh man I hated battlefield 3, I sold it to my buddy for 20 bucks after I beat it the same night I got it..... Gears of war 3 was ok but I think they really cheesed it out too much.. the whole football stadium scene with whats his face was lame...

GOTY........... skyrim

yes

but this...this is still super true. especially the part about the engine

Skyrim was destined to be GOTY, The momentum itself would have carried it to the title even if it was a massive disappointment, Which is was not.

Yes, It deserved GOTY but it's not a magnitude above some of the other titles.

No, it didn't deserve it - but I suppose I'm kinda weird in thinking they should have a different time frame for these awards. A game that comes out a month-and-a-half before the end of the year and then wins for that year - I think a game should be out a while before anyone decides if it's worth any awards.

Especially seeing all the comments on these forums about what people don't like about it. Yes, it may have sold a lot, but there's also a lot people don't like about it.

Other than that, I've been much more enamored of older games (Two Worlds, Drakensang), so I can't really comment on what was best about this last year only.

I don't play enough games any more to believe that anything should've been GOTY besides Skyrim, so I'll tell you right now that my ideas on the matter probably don't count for much. But if you're still curious about what I think of this, you're free to read on.

To be honest, when I picked up Skyrim I hadn't been following any of the prerelease news or even watched the official trailer. For the longest time the only thing I knew about it was that it was the sequel to Oblivion, and things stayed that way until I read Game Informer's cover story on the game about a year ago, which didn't manage to excite me in the slightest.

So when I finally got it on a whim last Christmas, I seriously surprised myself by clocking well over a hundred and fifty hours of my free time into the game. Now I'm so hooked on the game that I've become addicted to the series' lore and have even put a significant amount of time into the early games of the series, including both Morrowind and especially Daggerfall.

So does Skyrim deserve to be named GOTY? I don't know. But I know I've had quite a time with it.

EDIT: I've been doing some broader thinking about this and I'm beginning to believe that Skyrim actually does deserve to be named GOTY.

The reasoning behind this conclusion of mine is actually pretty simple. Long time gamers may look at Skyrim and see only flaws, and the flaws they see might be perfectly valid and real. But I think that kind of critical inspection of the game is sort of beside the point. No matter what way you look at it, Skyrim has had a huge impact on the gaming world. For better or for worse, it's one of those games that simply can't be ignored; the game's following is huge, it has sold incredibly well, and it's had a huge impact on gaming and game design in general. So regardless of how you may look at the game critically, you can't deny that it has had an impact - a really, really big impact - and in my opinion that's enough to name a title "Game of The Year."

Yes.

Imo no the PS3 version is to broken a multiplatform game should have to work on every system it's released for to get GOTY. If it was only released for the PC would be GOTY for me as TES games are always the best on PC.

Skyrim is great and all, but at the same time it's so lackluster to the point where it's almost angeringly shallow.

IMO Pokemon B/W was my GoTY for 2011.

I really felt Arkham City deserved it far more, repeating what I said Mark Hammil final reprise of the Joker, that alone puts it's up there, not only that but it was a fantastic game.

Gothic 3 did almost everything better than Skyrim, but no GotY. Skyrim is a lot of hype. Was Radiant Quest everything you hoped for? What about that 7000 steps? Having fun interfering with the economy like Beth said you could? How do you like that revolutionary shadow system? And let's give a hand for the “new bug tracker” that was supposed to squash all bugs and allow the devs to fix bugs in real time. 59.99 for a decent game, but not as good as it promised, and it came with a swarm of lies.

SheridanR said much of what I was going to say..... I'm not a big gamer. I never liked consoles with those controllers - could never get the aiming as well as a kb/mouse.... But wound up with an Xbox.

I'm not really qualified to compare games as such, but I will say this much: as a non-gamer, it certainly has svcked up an inordinate amount of my free time since loading it up before Christmas! It can be easy enough for noobs like me, and can be made more challenging for more adept players.

Granted there is a lot of repitition of design, and standard dialog, but the game is huge, and I guess they cut here and there with some repitition.

GOTY - well....I've well over 200 hours in it, and still am enjoying it, so yeah, maybe. For me at least.

As a ps3 owner of skyrim,i say no it didn't deserve it.

The game has been a total mess for ps3,the port seems to be lazy/amatuerish(pick one)issues were downplayed by bethesda,and a goty has to be playable imo to even qualify for being nominated.

Mine was not playable,continues to be a pain in the [censored] to play for any length of time even after 1.4,so yeah....

***Besides,even after all the pains in just getting it to play correctly,although i like it i was still dissapointed by it,there is too much leading by the hand and dumbing down in it for my likings,also not my kinda goty.