The shortlist for the Game Developers Choice Awards has one key omission for game of the year—and one choice that doesn’t belong
At first glance, the nominations for the upcoming Game Developers Choice Awards look reasonable. BioShock and Portal, two of 2007’s best games, top the list with five nominations each, including game of the year. But a closer look at the three other games short-listed for game of the year reveals one glaring omission and one questionable inclusion.
The GDC Awards, which are presented annually at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, are highly valued by video-game developers because the winners are chosen by their peers. Professional game developers who belong to Gamasutra, an industry association, are able to submit nominations. Those long lists are then narrowed down to five finalists in each category by an advisory committee chosen by Gamasutra and made up of industry veterans. The 13 members of this committee together encompass a range of experience and expertise.
The game of the year category “recognizes the choice of game developers for the overall best game release during 2007”. That guideline leaves a lot of room for interpretation; I expect that among the criteria used by the advisory committee are things like popularity, technical innovation, and even sales figures. However, a game of the year should be greater than the sum of its parts.
This year, the five nominees are BioShock, Call of Duty 4, Portal, Rock Band, and Super Mario Galaxy.
The first four games on that list have added to the video-game oeuvre. Even though BioShock and Call of Duty 4 are first-person shooters, they tackled that genre in a different way than any other game. Portal was, hands down, the most original and compelling game of the year. Rock Band took the music/rhythm category and raised it to new heights.
The game that doesn’t belong on this list is Super Mario Galaxy. It’s fun to play, sure, but it isn’t any different than six other Super Mario games we’ve played. It’s a three-dimensional rehash of a franchise that is more than 20 years old, and there’s no way it deserves to be considered for this award.
The game that’s a shocking omission from this list is BioWare’s Mass Effect. By blending elements of role-playing, action, and open-world games, Mass Effect gave us something we hadn’t seen before. With an intricate story line and incredible technological innovations, the overall Mass Effect package is a rich, epic tale that gamers get to participate in, and truly have an impact on.
Mass Effect got screwed out of a major nomination. Although the groundbreaking game received deserved nods in other categories—best game design, best writing, best audio, and innovation—that doesn’t make up for the fact that it was overlooked as a finalist for game of the year.
I wonder if someone took a look at the shortlists, realized that no Nintendo or Wii games had been included, and added Super Mario Galaxy in an effort to be inclusive. It would be unthinkable to have a video-game awards program without a Nintendo game in the mix, wouldn’t it? The problem is that in 2007, no Nintendo or Wii game deserved an award.
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However, I can only assume you're trolling for some internet traffic by slagging SMG. Your major beef seems to be that it's similar to previous Mario games. So what about Call of Duty 4? The only difference between it and the previous three CODs are the setting and the story. The gameplay is roughly the same. Same deal with Bioshock, except its predecessors were System Shock 1 and 2, and Rock Band is the logical progression from Guitar Hero 1 and 2 as well as DDR and that Konami guitar game. These games are all refinements on gaming ideas that have come before, so trying to make an argument that SMG doesn't belong because it's iterative is wrong.
And you'd replace it with Mass Effect? We have, in fact, seen Mass Effect before, and it was called Star Wars: KOTOR (also from Bioware). You say it has "technical innovations", but what about the atrocious load times and texture pop-in, the fact that it uses the same Unreal engine as many other games released this year, as well as the horrible inventory management? True, it has excellent art direction, great HD visuals, and a *deep* story, but its gameplay is not so original that you could say it's a greater leap from its predecessors than SMG is.
Mass Effect did not get "screwed out of a nomination". Both Mass Effect and SMG are excellent games that deserve nominations, but the logic you've used to suggest that ME is more deserving of an award than SMG is broken, and you have your facts wrong. You say SMG is "fun to play" but then toss it off as though that is an unimportant aspect, while most people would argue that it's the only aspect that matters (note Wii sales figures).