IMHO, the closest thing to gaming oscars are Spike TV's VGA awards, It usually involves the directors of several of the most important gaming magazines (Which have their own GotY in turn) and is broadcasted, with the developers themselves usually going there. This time Skyrim got away with It, though It's surely biased, I bet they paid a lot to get It, because the game is garbage to someone on its right mind. Now, I'm off to continue my crusade explaining why TES VI will only feature three skills and be utter garbage, brb.

Used to be. Now it's just a rag.

Simple. Use one of the following to determine the best game in 2011:

1. Most number of GOTY 2011
2. Most played game on stream
3. Highest score on Metacritic
4. Highest sales

Can we call it PC game of the decade already? ... media needs to up the ante

It is too early to call that for this decade. 9 more years buddy.

I will be amazed if the PS3 magazines rank Skyrim as a GOTY.

http://www.officialp...-on-sale-now-4/

Just give GOTY to one of the indie developers. They actually deserve them, by giving us high quality, well polished games for a more than reasonable price.

Triple A games don't guarantee high quality like we've seen for... well the last 6-7 years.
It's time that the mainstream developers, who sold their soul to the almighty dollar (or whatever the currency in their country is), realize that they are doing it wrong.
They lost their heart and their vision. The aim is no longer to release ambitious high quality titles, but poorly done multiplatformers to sell the most copies.

Gaming industry and gamers
I am dissapoint.

One simple reason - Despite all that's been "lost", the game is still the best game of THIS year! Maybe not the "Best Game of All Time" (Starcraft still holds that award), but nothing else released in 2011 competes with Skyrim.

This board is full of nerds [censored]ing and naysaying, but Skyrim is the biggest and most successful game Beth has released yet. Totally deserves any GOTY awards it gets.

I'm not saying the game is perfect, but out of the box its far better than either Morrowind, Oblivion of FO3 were. It also has ton of more depth than most games released nowadays have.

I'm surprised by the reaction people are having to Skyrim receiving Game of the Year Awards.... In my opinion, Game of the Year awards of this gaming era are popularity contests. Whoever can cause the most hype wins; sort of like presidential campaigns. They advertise like crazy and then when you play the game, it's extremely shallow. I guarantee you 100% that if Skyrim wasn't released this year, Modern Warfare 3 would've won. Games of today aren't judged by how well they play or how finished a game is, they are judged by the reputation of the developer and advertising. Skyrim, in my opinion, isn't even close to Game of the Year along with Modern Warfare series (which I despise). There were much better games released this year and unfortunately, the most hyped game of the year is winning and it wasn't even released completed...

Of course It's a popularity contest, like the Oscars, the Time's Person of the Year or even Nobel Prizes (albeit in different spheres). It's based solely on oppinions, and that is as much as you have, doesen't matter if you held yours in a higher steem. And by the way, as I already said, MW3 wasn't even nominated for this year's VGAs GotY.

Xenoblade Chronicles, The Witcher 2, Bastion (the most deserving one in my opinion) and The Binding of Isaac, Dark Souls, to name a few games that qualify as RPGs nowadays.
Saying there are no competitors is very narrow minded.

GOTY doesn't mean a thing. what's more important is whether you like the game or not

same logic with academy awards etc

I've read all of the posts in this topic yet nobody congratulated Bethesda. Anyways, I'll do the honor..

Congratulations Bethesda!!!

No. Even Morrowind had the same concept, whether you adore that game or not. The main concept (at least to me) is a sandbox open world RPG with lots of freedom for the gamer in which the PC's progress is determined by what you do. The fact that some aspects of the game changed, doesn't mean that this concept was changed.

Too much cutting. Companies shouldn't be rewarded for that. Good thing GotYs don't matter, at all.

Gee The Witcher 2 did not even get a mention in the highly recommended it had a good story line that branched in different directions and good solid side characters what more can you want in a RPG.

An open world.

An open world doesn't make a great game. Loads of dungeon searching and finding places can get repetitive as it does in Skyrim. The Witcher 2 has a good balance, didn't go over the top and they polished the game up nicely, added good patches and free DLC's.

Also The Witcher 2 done by a much smaller game studio. Amazing how a big studio like Bethesda couldn't even put together a modern engine with the money they have and are struggling to fix bugs with such a huge game.

I don't mind Skyrim winning GOTY awards, but I do mind people using those awards to pretend that all the flaws in Skyrim aren't there. There are flaws, lots and lots of them, and they're not going away because game reviewers are too gutless to actually be honest in their reviews. If you write a review about PC Skyrim and don't mention the garbage UI, you either have [censored] for brains or you're a gutless wimp that shouldn't be taken serious in the future.

Normal users don't need to know a thing about UI design but reviewers damn well should, which means not having opened a book on design isn't an excuse for them. Thus they're either really, really clueless and incapable of telling good from bad or they're intentionally not doing so. I noticed someone quoting a review of Skyrim that said the menu was "elegant". Yeah, really elegant to have massively bloated renderings for no reason, no overview of what's what, no easy way to navigate those painfully long lists, and no summary screens to get all the info at a glance. Terribly elegant, really. Or perhaps just plain [censored] terrible.

Imagine if Windows worked like that? Icons always took up at least half a screen each, no list view, no details view, and everything is based on scrolling through looooong lists of titles. Some times you scroll down, some times it's horizontal scroll, and the go forward and go back function is on the same button. Oh, and if you click a pixel off your target, you'll close the Windows shell completely and have to reopen it manually. Yeah, it would be so awesome if gamesas had designed the Windows UI, wouldn't it?

This. Which is why I'm not upset that Skyrim is winning GOTY titles like crazy. With the average reviewer wasting as few hours as possible on each game and not having the balls to be honest regarding the big titles, it's really par for the course that the AAA titles with million dollar marketing campaigns behind them are getting the awards.

while i dont care about goty or mind it either it kinda bugs me that ive seen so many series (rpgs,or fps ususally)..get this "badge of honor" ....ive never once seen a platformer get a goty award........not even mario.........wheres goty for ratchet and clank?

Actually it is....it's the difference between the Oscar's opinion and your mothers on Best Picture. Either way this thread is not about what GOTY is worth....

That's beyond some people's egos.

You think a open world makes a good RPG?if so lol.It was also a game that was designed for PC so us PC users didn't get a crap port or a dumbed down game.

I've never really cared what game wins GOTY.