A Game of the Year 2012 Poll: Results
CLICK HERE TO JUMP TO THE PRETTY COLOR-CODED FULL RESULTS
This explanation will look a lot like that of previous years, but:
Every year since 2004 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:
- The Walking Dead (3440) *** GAME OF THE YEAR ***
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown (3022)
- Mass Effect 3 (2730)
- FTL: Faster Than Light (2676)
- Borderlands 2 (2671)
- Dishonored (1625)
- Hotline Miami (1551)
- Journey (1532)
- Diablo 3 (1480)
- Sleeping Dogs (1465)
- Mark of the Ninja (1436)
- Spec Ops: The Line (1352)
- Far Cry 3 (1313)
- Xenoblade Chronicles (1195)
- Torchlight 2 (1191)
- Guild Wars 2 (1113)
- Frog Fractions (1078)
- Assassin’s Creed 3 (994)
- Halo 4 (868)
- Legend of Grimrock (757)
The numbers in parentheses are the final scores each game got under the poll’s ranking system. 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 2012:
#1, The Walking Dead
- Top-ranked PC Exclusive:
#4, FTL: Faster than Light
- Top-ranked PS3 Exclusive:
#8, Journey
- Top-ranked game for a Console Download Service:
#8, Journey
- Top-ranked Wii Exclusive:
#14, Xenoblade Chronicles
- Top-ranked Browser Game:
#17, Frog Fractions
- Top-ranked 360 Exclusive:
#19, Halo 4
- Top-ranked WiiU Exclusive:
#27, New Super Mario Bros. U
- Top-ranked 3DS Exclusive:
#36, Kid Icarus: Uprising
- Top-ranked Vita Exclusive:
#71, Gravity Rush
- Top-ranked Smartphone Exclusive:
#91, SpaceTeam
- Top-ranked RPG:
#3, Mass Effect 3
- Top-ranked “Indie” Game:
#4, FTL: Faster than Light
- Top-ranked FPS:
#5, Borderlands 2
- “Cult” Award (see below):
#14, Xenoblade Chronicles
- Top-ranked H-Game?
#72, Katawa Shoujo
NOTEWORTHY LOSERS
- Best game of 2012 which somehow nobody considered to be their #1 pick: #25, Penny Arcade: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3
- Worst game of 2012 that at least one person considered their #1 pick: Three-way tie between three games tied for the #260 slot: “Carrier Command: Gaea Mission”; “OFF”; and NCAA Football 13. Each of these games got only one vote, but each of these voters considered it their game of the year.
- Worst game of 2012: Two-way tie between the games tied for #331: “War of the Human Tanks” and Fingle. Both of these games scored only one vote each, each from someone who considered it their 20th best game of the year.
There were a whole 57 games on the nominations list that no one voted for at all.
ALTERNATE SCORING METHODS
The rankings listed above are based on a version of the Borda count 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 place votes they got, the top three remain the same but the rest of the list changes dramatically, with a whole bunch of indie games suddenly in the top 20. I bolded entries that are different in the first-place-votes count:
First Past the Post
- The Walking Dead (70)
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown (48)
- Mass Effect 3 (33)
- Xenoblade Chronicles (28)
- Borderlands 2 (26)
- Journey (23)
- Dishonored (18)
- FTL: Faster Than Light (16)
- Hotline Miami (15)
- Guild Wars 2 (13)
- Sleeping Dogs (12)
- Spec Ops: The Line (11)
- Dragon’s Dogma (9)
- Crusader Kings II (8)
- Hexagon / Super Hexagon (6)
- Halo 4 (6)
- Far Cry 3 (6)
- Dustforce (5)
- Fez (5)
- Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward (4)
- Planetside 2 (4)
- Kid Icarus: Uprising (4)
Most years when I look at the first-past-the-post list a “cult” game emerges that received very few overall votes, but where an overwhelming percentage of those votes were #1 votes (I think of this as the “Persona award”); this year the standout seems to be XenoBlade Chronicles, which was at a pretty okay #14 in the normal rankings but skyrockets to #4 in the FPTP rankings. Also of possible note here are Dragon’s Dogma, which jumped from #24 to #13, and “Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward”, a game I’ve honestly never heard of, which jumped all the way up from #57 to tie for twentieth place.
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. Your eyes are probably starting to glaze over at this point, so again I bolded the places where these two votes differ from the official rank.
Approval
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IRV
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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 a few years ago 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 (306 voters)
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Tigsource.com (33 voters)
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Platformers.net (34 voters)
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My own personal blog and twitter (48 voters)
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