A Game of the Year 2008 Poll: Results

CLICK HERE TO JUMP TO THE PRETTY COLOR-CODED FULL RESULTS

I’m just gonna copy and paste the explanation I gave last year:

For the last few years I’ve been hosting this Game of the Year poll for the users of some forums I read. There are a lot of GOTY polls out there, but this one I think is kind of special. Most polls, you’re given a list of four or five options and you’re asked to pick the one you liked best. This poll, people are given a list of a couple of hundred options, consisting of every new game released in the previous year– and asked to rate their top ten or twenty.

This does a few interesting things. First off, we get to see all the information about what people’s second, third etc choices are. Second off, because the second, third etc choices count, people are more likely to vote for the game they want to win, rather than the game they think is likely to win– they’re less likely to engage in “strategic voting”. Finally, because we have all this information, we’re actually able to provide somewhat reasonable rankings for something like the top hundred or so games of last year.

The full results– showing the exact number of voters who ranked each game first, second, third place etc– can be found here. In the meantime, the final results were:

  1. Fallout 3 (8780) *** GAME OF THE YEAR ***
  2. Left 4 Dead (6626)
  3. Grand Theft Auto 4 (5032)
  4. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (4321)
  5. Rock Band 2 (3290)
  6. Dead Space (3151)
  7. Gears of War 2 (2942)
  8. Fable 2 (2751)
  9. Braid (2729)
  10. Metal Gear Solid 4 (2666)
  11. Little Big Planet (2520)
  12. No More Heroes (2241)
  13. Audiosurf (2152)
  14. Castle Crashers (2083)
  15. Valkyria Chronicles (2027)
  16. Mario Kart Wii (2014)
  17. The World Ends with You (2000)
  18. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (1914)
  19. Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Ep. 1 (1910)
  20. Sins of a Solar Empire (1850)

The numbers in parentheses are the final scores each game got under the poll’s ranking system. (The scores in general were a lot closer than last year–basically all the rankings 14-18 are within a couple votes of each other!) Thanks if you voted, and some more elaborate analysis of the results (plus an explanation of the scores) can be found below.

NOTEWORTHY WINNERS

  • GOTY 2008:

    #1, Fallout 3

  • Top-ranked Wii Exclusive:

    #4, Super Smash Bros. Brawl

  • Top-ranked 360 Exclusive:

    #7, Gears of War 2

  • Top-ranked PS3 Exclusive:

    #10, Metal Gear Solid 4

  • Top-ranked PC Exclusive:

    #13, Audiosurf

  • Top-ranked DS Exclusive:

    #17, The World Ends With You

  • Top-ranked PSP Exclusive:

    #39, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII

  • Best FPS:

    #2, Left 4 Dead

  • Best RPG:

    #1, Fallout 3

  • Best Sports Game:

    #27, Burnout Paradise

  • Best Game Only Available Through A Console Download Service:

    #8, Braid

  • Special “Cult” Award (see below):

    #26, Persona 4 & #15, Valkyria Chronicles (Tie)

NOTEWORTHY LOSERS

  • Best game of 2008 which somehow nobody considered to be their #1 pick: #33, Spore
  • Worst game of 2008 that at least one person considered their #1 pick: #179, Midnight Club: Los Angeles (Only two people voted for this)
  • Worst game of 2008: #203, Mystery Case Files: MillionHEIR (Only one person voted for this; it was their #20 pick)

There were also ten games which were listed, but which no one voted for at all.

ALTERNATE SCORING METHODS

The rankings listed above are based on what was intended to be an approximation of Condorcet voting, but which I’m told is actually closer to the Borda count. In my Borda-ish voting method, each vote cast for a game gives that game a certain number of points. If someone ranks a game #1, that game gets 20 points. If they rank it #2, the game gets 19 points. If they rank it #3 the game gets 18 points… and so on. I have a script that checks a couple of alternate ways of ranking the same data, though.

For example, if we rank games only by the number of first post votes they got, we get a wildly different list:

First Past the Post

  1. Fallout 3 (182 first-place votes)
  2. Left 4 Dead (109)
  3. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (42)
  4. Metal Gear Solid 4 (42)
  5. Valkyria Chronicles (39)
  6. Persona 4 (39)
  7. Grand Theft Auto 4 (35)
  8. Dead Space (31)
  9. Rock Band 2 (30)
  10. The World Ends with You (30)
  11. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (30)
  12. Gears of War 2 (23)
  13. Little Big Planet (21)
  14. No More Heroes (19)
  15. Braid (15)
  16. World of Goo (14)
  17. Spelunky (12)
  18. Sins of a Solar Empire (11)
  19. Fable 2 (10)
  20. Prince of Persia (10)

Every year when I do this there’s some game which scores horribly low in the objective rankings but gets a really startling proportion of first-place votes; last year the standout game in the “cult” department was Persona 3; this year the standout was, interestingly enough, Persona 4, which only got 87 votes at all, placing it at #26 in the overall rankings– but nearly half of those votes, a full 39, ranked it in first place, putting it in sixth place in the First Past the Post ranking above. Tying Persona 4 in the First Past the Post ranking is Valkyria Chronicles, which did a little better in terms of how many people voted for it (117 votes) but which still gets a pretty great cult ranking since one in three of those voters considered it their #1 game. (Honorable mention in the cult category should probably go to “Spelunky“, a wildly obscure but kind of awesome freeware pixel art game released in the last two weeks of December, which came in way down at 51st place in the overall rankings but managed to come in 17th in first-pace votes– with again nearly one-third of the people who voted for Spelunky at all rating it #1.)

I also did two more ways of sorting the rankings: an “approval” vote, where nothing is counted except the number of votes a game received (i.e. a first-place and a twentieth-place ranking count the same– all the matters is if the game was on someone’s list); and an instant runoff vote. Most years I’ve done this the Instant Runoff and pseudo-Borda rankings have been almost the same, but this time there were some interesting differences (with the biggest one being, for some reason I don’t understand, World of Goo somehow jumping a good seven spots in the rankings?!). Your eyes are probably starting to glaze over at this point, so I bolded the places where these two votes differ from the normal rankings:

Approval

  1. Fallout 3 (488)
  2. Left 4 Dead (388)
  3. Grand Theft Auto 4 (325)
  4. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (266)
  5. Rock Band 2 (205)
  6. Dead Space (204)
  7. Braid (187)
  8. Gears of War 2 (185)
  9. Fable 2 (184)
  10. Audiosurf (161)
  11. Little Big Planet (161)
  12. Metal Gear Solid 4 (161)
  13. Castle Crashers (160)
  14. Penny Arcade Adventures ep.1 (176)
  15. No More Heroes (155)
  16. Mario Kart Wii (148)
  17. The World Ends with You (129)
  18. Professor Layton and the Curious Village (128)
  19. Mega Man 9 (124)
  20. Sins of a Solar Empire (122)

IRV

  1. Fallout 3
  2. Left 4 Dead
  3. Grand Theft Auto 4
  4. Super Smash Bros. Brawl
  5. Dead Space
  6. Rock Band 2
  7. Gears of War 2
  8. Fable 2
  9. Braid
  10. Metal Gear Solid 4
  11. Little Big Planet
  12. Castle Crashers
  13. Mario Kart Wii
  14. No More Heroes
  15. World of Goo
  16. AudioSurf
  17. The World Ends with You
  18. Valkyria Chronicles
  19. Penny Arcade Adventures ep.1
  20. Sins of a Solar Empire

FINALLY: PER-FORUM BREAKDOWNS

As mentioned before, this poll mostly exists for a handful of video game forums where some people I know post. Since last year when I started posting the results on this blog, I’ve tried to actually run some extra results, in each case counting only those voters who– as far as one could tell from looking at the logs– had come to the poll from one particular forum or other.

So, here you have it– these numbers aren’t totally accurate because my logging method is not entirely trustworthy, but here’s an approximate by-forum breakdown of these results. Links go to color-coded full listings.

Penny Arcade Forums (806 voters)

  1. Fallout 3
  2. Left 4 Dead
  3. Grand Theft Auto 4
  4. Super Smash Bros Brawl
  5. Rock Band 2
  6. Dead Space
  7. Braid
  8. Gears of War 2
  9. Fable 2
  10. Metal Gear Solid 4
  11. Little Big Planet
  12. AudioSurf
  13. Mario Kart Wii
  14. Castle Crashers
  15. No More Heroes
  16. Valkyria Chronicles
  17. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
  18. Penny Arcade Adventures ep.1
  19. The World Ends with You
  20. Sins of a Solar Empire

Platformers.net (42 voters)

  1. Super Smash Bros. Brawl
  2. Fallout 3
  3. Left 4 Dead
  4. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
  5. No More Heroes
  6. Persona 4
  7. Mega Man 9
  8. Professor Layton and the Curious Village
  9. The World Ends with You
  10. AudioSurf
  11. Grand Theft Auto 4
  12. World of Goo
  13. Dead Space
  14. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
  15. Metal Gear Solid 4
  16. Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
  17. Little Big Planet
  18. Rock Band 2
  19. Tales of Vesperia
  20. Braid
360Arcadians.net (37 voters)

  1. Fallout 3
  2. Grand Theft Auto 4
  3. Left 4 Dead
  4. Gears of War 2
  5. Rock Band 2
  6. Metal Gear Solid 4
  7. Fable 2
  8. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2
  9. Little Big Planet
  10. Dead Space
  11. Saints Row 2
  12. Sins of a Solar Empire
  13. Burnout Paradise
  14. Prince of Persia
  15. Valkyria Chronicles
  16. Castle Crashers
  17. NHL 09
  18. Lost Odyssey
  19. Penny Arcade Adventures ep.1
  20. Civilization Revolution

Mechanically Separated Meat (6 voters)

  1. Super Smash Bros Brawl
  2. Professor Layton and the Curious Villiage
  3. Super Street Fighter 2 HD Remix
  4. Mega Man 9
  5. World of Goo
  6. Trauma Center: Under the Knife
  7. The World Ends with You
  8. Iji
  9. Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden Hourglass
  10. Fallout 3

5 Responses to “A Game of the Year 2008 Poll: Results”

  1. matt Says:

    on some of the noteworthy losers, you’ve got ‘2007’ instead of 2008

  2. mcc Says:

    Matt, thanks. The initial version of this post was made very late at night and contained a number of typos :O

    I think I’ve got them all now though.

  3. ray Says:

    i feel so out of touch with “the masses”

  4. Formula1 Says:

    aw………. only 6 voters

  5. mcc Says:

    Hey ray… don’t feel too bad, my top two votes were Mega Man 9 and World of Goo and I ran the poll D:

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