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Untitled Goose Game wins the DICE Awards Game of the Year award
- Thread starter Deleted member 51691
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The game was charming, but it was way too short and mechanically simple
It was Goat Simulator with good looks and way more polished, basically. GS had way more content though.
I know that awards are products of personal opinions, but ehh, I would like to understand the judges criteria here, because I'm not seeing why it should have been awarded the best game of the year.
People dismissing those who are questioning the decision are making my eyes roll with those juvenile coments.
C'mon now, we are all grown ups.
Let's not post just to provoke people while adding nothing to the discussion
It was Goat Simulator with good looks and way more polished, basically. GS had way more content though.
I know that awards are products of personal opinions, but ehh, I would like to understand the judges criteria here, because I'm not seeing why it should have been awarded the best game of the year.
People dismissing those who are questioning the decision are making my eyes roll with those juvenile coments.
C'mon now, we are all grown ups.
Let's not post just to provoke people while adding nothing to the discussion
Congratulations House House. I adored your game and so did everyone in my family. :)
It's bad takes like these that makes anyone disagreeing with the nomination over other titles look bad. Have you played Goat Simulator recently? The games are not alike at all. Plus Goat Simulator had three separate games to have "more content" anyway
Comparing Goat Simulator to Goose Game is like comparing a hillbilly destruction derby to a kart racer. The only comparable thing between those two games is that you control an animal
Yes, I have played it recently. If you havent know yet, Sony has given GS as a Plus game last month.
With both you have very simplistic mechanics in order to solve tasks given to you in a close environment.
UGG may be like Mario Kart and Goat Simulator like Burnout, but they are both racers. That's what I'm trying to say. They belong to the same genre.
They are really not that different. Their main differences are tone and polish (and camera view).
I actually had a really fun time with Goat Simulator. You're drastically upselling its gameplay and drastically reducing Goose Game's gameplay. Goat was an incongruous barely-directed physics playground. Goat is a tightly-constructed clockwork puzzle box, like Hitman in a small village.
Goat Simulator is an incredibly shallow sandbox made to cash in on LOL THIS IS SO RANDOM! reaction from the internet and being intentionally bad. Goose is a competent game on its own, made to be a game, which people for some reason took a liking so big that they started memeing into everything. They aren't even comparable in meme status because nobody bothered to make Goat Simulator memes while Goose became part of "gamer culture" as sadly and annoying that might be
I actually had way more fun with the Goose, despit thinking that it was way too simple
You can finish the game in less than one hour. It was tight, but barebones, imho.
And I think that you are underselling GS (and Hitman with that comparison, c'mon now)
The game has 4 player co op (couch), a lot of different goat types, more variety in gameplay such as races, collectibles to find and etc.
The Goose does better what it sets to do, but the Goat does a lot more.
Okay so what about the people who are so upset that Death Stranding or another game didn't win who talk down on UGG by calling it a meme game or a game undeserving of the award. Are they being mature?
What makes me roll my eyes are the people who say that a certain game doesn't deserve an award of that prestige. I would never nominate GTA for anything but I have the sense of mind to congratulate the devs who worked for it instead of posting 10 reasons why it doesn't deserve the award because it didn't cater to my needs.
Congratulations House House.
Such a fun little game, perfect when some non-gaming friends come to my house. Everyone loves it!
(of course Era doesn't)
Such a fun little game, perfect when some non-gaming friends come to my house. Everyone loves it!
(of course Era doesn't)
You have to put things into some context
A game with pretty much 3 actions: run, hold and honk, lasting 1h, won over games like DMC 5, RE 2 and Sekiro.
That's like Shawn of the Dead winning Best Movie against Lord of the Rings
Opinions and stuff, since Shawn of the Dead is someone's favorite movie of all time. And the movie is good in its own rights.
But you can be sure that there would be a similar outrage.
I'm happy for House House, because the game has a lot of heart, it's fun, and they put a lot of work in it, clearly.
But it shouldnt be a surprise that a lot of people are surprised and questionning Dice.
And genre.
It's weird to me that some people think games have to be a certain length or have a certain number of mechanics in order for their selection as GotY to be justified.
Games are way more than just runtime and button inputs. Why do GotY contenders always have to be complex animals? Why isn't there room for a simple goose? There was this similar thought process for quote a few people here when Tetris Effect won Giantbomb's GotY last year - it was 'just Tetris' and 'actually the main campaign was less that 2 hours so it shouldn't be deserving of the award'.
Similar things seem to happen in reverse in the film industry, where certain genres seem to never get awards recognition despite being great films - comedies and horror (relating nicely to your point about Shaun of the Dead) barely get a look in despite being critical and popular darlings.
I like goose game just fine but I would never give it goty. I personally believe it's brevity and simplicity helped it win due to the folks who voted for it not having the time to play hours and hours of multiple games. It has a great first impression where you understand everything the games about within the first few minutes. As someone who plays and completes a ton of games every year, giving goty to Goose game feels odd. I think it's the same reason Mario Kart Tour was rewarded racing game of the year. I could see some people trying it out for 10 minutes or just glancing at it and thinking, "wow Nintendo manged to put this great franchise on a phone", then voting for it without even realizing how poor it is compared to it's contemporaries.
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It's stupid to assume people who don't agree with the award necessarily love cinematic AAA games or shooty bangbangs.
How long, how much money, and how many people worked on a game should have no bearing on how it's perceived and to what level we hold it to.
Why is it stupid when that's what most of their arguments are?
The scriptwriting team (Kojima, Kenji Yano, Shuyo Murata) for Death Stranding wasn't nominated for anything, true, but the game did win two DICE awards: 'Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design' and 'Outstanding Technical Achievement'. The game is also nominated for seven awards at the Game Developers Choice Awards, and seems to be pretty well-regarded among Japanese devs.
Coming back to Untitled Goose Game: looks really well-designed and a lot of fun, from what I've seen (bought it, but haven't played it yet). I notice that UGG also has four nominations at the GDC Awards: Game of the Year, Best Design, Best Audio, and the Innovation Award. So that's a pretty resoundingly positive response from developers, all around.
I'm guessing that at least some devs have a vote in both the DICE and the GDC awards, but I'd also guess that the two juries are mostly non-overlapping. Anyone know? Doesn't seem entirely clear, from what's immediately accessible online:
ICAN Member Eligibility
All professional game developers who are part of the ICAN member list are eligible to provide nominations for the Main Category Awards. International Choice Awards Network (ICAN) is an invitation-only group comprised of leading game creators from all parts of the video game industry. ICAN members are asked to recuse themselves from nominating and/or voting on any games that they are personally involved with. [...]
Main Category Award Nomination Process
Nominations for the Game Developers Choice Awards are made by the International Choice Awards Network (ICAN). It is not necessary to make a nomination for each category. Nominations for the same game in different categories is allowed. ICAN members cannot nominate the same game in the same category more than once or nominate a game that they are personally involved with - any duplicate submissions will be ignored. [...]
Main Category Award Finalist / Winner Selection Process
Once the ICAN nomination process closes, the editors of Gamasutra will add their votes to the open nominations in order to help select the finalists. The finalists of the Main Category Awards are then voted on by the final voting body, which is made up of the ICANs, and the editors of Gamasutra.
Thank you to the ICANs for voting and continually choosing outstanding games as our winners! [...]
I wasn't the one who brought dev length into the discussion.
If 2 games executed their intent equally well and i need to to choose one as the best, it's reasonable the pick is the game that that tried and succeeded doing more; that took a bigger swing; that had more complexities to manage and obstacles to overcome. My impression is that Outer Wilds and Disco Elysium are bigger feats in that regard.
User Banned (1 week) - Continued trolling through numerous posts
The "oH my people are mad a AAA cinematic game didn't win" people here are clearly showing signs of a double digit IQ lul, UGG is a good Meme Game but it's not deserving of a GOTY title over the plethora of other games that came out this year.
Lean elegance in design is its own art form. I adore Outer Wilds, was praising it when the game was just a student project, but its scale and scope isn't inherently better than Goose's personality-dense homey canvas.
Oh yeah and posting
"GOTY?! What a fucking joke lol."
and
"good Meme Game"
will teach em.
Your meme game was good, not GOTY worthy over what OP mentioned sorry not sorry ;)
What's wrong with calling it a meme game? Are people offended by that lol.
I agree lol. The game's charm lasted all of 30 minutes for me.
But you did. I'm not sure how a "how much effort" was put into a game doesn't correlate with its gestation period.
I mean it's extremely reductionist and kind of disrespectful given the context. Like it's just some disposable fodder.
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"SMH memes" is one of the more reductive video game comments that I've seen made on these boards lately.
Happy to see it didn't have to be an AAAA title to win. A very fun, entertaining.....sometimes stressful game. But we'll deserved
speaking to someone who worked at panic, they were really surprised and happy with the success (this was before launch, when the most recent trailer had already garnered hundreds of thousands of views). when i spoke to a guy who spoke to a guy at gdc (2018) about it, they weren't sure what the 'final name' was going to be. house house is also a bit standoffish on making a physical version because they're worried about the negative repercussions it might have on the environment. everything i've gathered leads me to believe they just wanted to make a game off of an offbeat idea and were caught up in the success of it.
it's pretty similar to undertale in that way. toby fox only wanted $5k in his kickstarter, got ten times that amount, and then when it launched, it was (correctly) lauded for its strong game design, storytelling, music, and art style. and it burrowed its way into general gaming culture that fox most likely didn't intend.
I enjoyed my time with the game and thought it was something unique and fun, but having it be game of the year? Definitely a stretch, for sure.
Still, congrats to the devs. They certainly made a memorable hit with the game even if the memes were what kept it relevant for so long. lol
Still, congrats to the devs. They certainly made a memorable hit with the game even if the memes were what kept it relevant for so long. lol
I think the real travesty is Fallen Order winning best action adventure.
IM MAD š”