Everyone is mad about this but I still don't understand how RDR2 was even nominated for Labor of Love, let alone won.
For the nominations users at least had the option to skip sections if they couldn't think of anything to nominate. For the voting, in order to get the participation reward players had to vote for something in each category.
This led to a lot of users who don't care about the actual voting and just wanting the participation to vote for the one game they recognized in the category.
Popularity based on trolling. Every year Labor of Love goes to Terraria or CSGO or something earnest like that.
Guessing short sighted algorithms. Because you can see on Valves side of things, packages have been updated/added/etc this year which probably allows it to be picked up.
https://steamdb.info/app/1174180/depots/
You can see here, the DLC was updated in 2023 https://steamdb.info/app/1190051/info/
Valve loves money and it clearly shows. The steam awards just became an advertising tool, people in Valve had to write the paragraph about the game.
They do like money, but Valve also loves providing a service to people.
Nobody uses Epic Games, Origin, Ubisoft Connect, or Battle.net because they want to, they use it because they have to.
Steam Awards is a bit janky sure, but to say that their inability to run pointless awards properly ruins the convenience and value that Steam brings to its users would be a gross overstatement.
Damn i only have EG and Gog accounts because of the free games... and Ubisoft because of the AC (except Valhalla, fk that), series .
No they don’t care about the service, we should be able to play games without steam client, we should be able to resell digital games, developers should not had to pay $100 non refundable fees to upload one game each time, etc.
Steam cares about money, it’s just that simple.
They're a business, not a charity. OF COURSE they care about money. What's nice is that they do it ethically and in a consumer-friendly way.
Are you able to resell digital games on Nintendos platforms? What about playstation or xbox? Wow, no you say?
Neither in steam, the keysellers are scams and the developers can scam you with the key. You don’t own the game, Nintendo lets you own games in physical format and has never let publishers remove them.
Technically the game does have innovative gameplay, no AAA studio has the balls to release a game as boring and lacking in gameplay that Bethesda has, they spent over a decade making fast travel the most integral gameplay mechanic.
Fast travel, plus inconsistency in whether or not you even get an "immersive" cutscene. Half the time you click into the menu and BOOM you're standing outside at some new location. About as much fun as fast traveling to another part of an Excel sheet.
That's honestly my main issue. I got 25 hours in and got frustrated I wasn't getting any cutscenes. Been waiting for a mod to add them every time I travel before I go back
They make a huge difference! I could at least keep myself in the zone with cutscenes. Without them it's just absolutely horrible to go anywhere.
Exactly, without them it's literally impossible to feel like you aren't fast traveling. The beauty of previous Bethesda games was that you could play the entire game without fast traveling and you would be rewarded almost every time you chose to walk instead of fast travel.
I stoped playing when I got shitty that I had to run to my next destination, got so used to fast traveling that walking became a chore.
The awards don't mean shit, there was nothing even close to innovative about Starfield. They took No Man's Sky, made it worse, and shoved their 15 year old npc behavior in it.
I am in a mad bubble then because I have never heard anything good about Starfield, or even seen for that matter. Besides maybe Joel Haver's starfield videos on youtube and those are parodies.
That or these big companies have an army of steam accounts for this. Thats not completely out of the question.
Or, and I'm just spitballing here...
The votes don't actually matter and Valve will choose winners.
What would be the point of that? They’ve had fan bases work together before, if Valve did something like that it would be immediately figured out most likely.
When the game first launched it's "Mostly Positive" on steam. This is kinda similar with games like Cyberpunk 2077, when it launched people who likes it, likes it, and when people who likes it moved on it was left with people who hold grudge and will continue to push it down, and positive voice will also began to get bullied because of their opinion.
The flip side of this similar scenario is Witcher 3, where negative voice will get bullied because of their opinion. Internet is sure a silly place.
There was a lot of PR consultant driven hype early on, and quite a few people bought into it, or just assumed Bethesda could do no wrong and leapt to their defense. Or it was their goons astroturfing, none of the alternatives would really be that surprising.
I would agree that you would have to be living in a bubble to not hear a single good thing about Starfield. I mean, you can just read reviews (even the lower scored ones) and see what the game does well.
So, three people had nothing good to say about the game?
Here, I'll say something good. The game has some really solid quests in it. And the shipbuilder can be a lot of fun if you enjoy that type of stuff, especially given the fact that the ships all have interiors you can walk around.
There, you've now heard a good thing about the game.
The shipbuilding was my favorite parts of the streams. I wouldn't say it was enough to call it innovative, though. I guess I'm really just deeply wondering what kind of person it takes the play that and be like "god damn that was innovative as fuck." Apparently, there is a lot of them.
The mechanics of the new game plus might not be entirely unique, but are pretty rare among games. Even just having the story acknowledge it in anyway is pretty rare.
No one is more sure of their opinions than gamers are with games they have never played, haha.
I liked it well enough. Not enough to repeat the loop 11 times. But enough to finish the game and find that idea inside with a some work. It wasn't bad enough for me to write it off completely.
I enjoyed the ship building a lot. It felt innovative to me. It was a blast and pretty well done. The bulls I've seen out there range from insane to just freaking cool.
I thought the possibility of killing off your spouse or main companion was innovative and painful. I put the game down for a few hours to decide how to move forward. Save scum or live with my path despite that loss.
The hate bandwagon for games seems a bit out of control these days. People are literally going into the community for those games just to talk shit.. Not to be constructive or to hear why people like it. Just to be mad and try to convince others they can't possibly like it. It's weird.
It's worse than that because Steam essentially pay you to vote (by giving you a card or something you can sell) so people are incentivised to just pick a random game or the only game they've heard of.
Wait, do they know what the word innovative means?
Wait, do they know what the word gameplay means?
Wait, do they know what the word most means?
It was community chosen. So a lot of people trolled. There's a random dating sim in the"Outstanding story" finalists
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2322560/Love_Is_All_Around
2006: Make oblivion
2007-2022: Recycle gameplay for other IPs
2023: Make oblivion in space
Truly innovative
2023: Make oblivion in space
I fucking wish. I'm a huge, bitter whiner about Starfield and I would've loved it if it'd kept quality as high as Oblivion was (for its time, don't laugh)
No laugh. Oblivion still holds up imo. Sure, most npc are thin as paper, but so are in starfield. Tho oblivion at least have them silly and memorable.
I have no side to take, but it's sorta hilarious seeing people saying the award mean nothing when it's starfield that win it, and on the other hand congratulate Baldur's Gate for winning another GOTY. Truly the Schrodinger Award.
Games you liked winning awards is something to celebrate. Games you don't like winning awards is proof that awards are a joke and should be ignored. Just how things work.
For real. The new in thing is to sit on any game you are mildly disappointed in and claim it's the worst game of all time and no one can like it.
For being the shittiest game of all time there sure are a lot of people (myself included) who put in nearly a hundred hours into it or even more...
Everyone obsessed with absolutes these days, no place for middle ground or a measured response.
Yeah, but whether you like Starfield or not, can we all admit that it's for sure not most innovative?
What did it do that's particularly new, innovative, or great?
Why did you include great in new/innovative?
I think the ship builder fits all of that despite your wording. It was new, it was fun, it achieved awesome results. The amount of interesting ships people built was crazy. It plays a pretty big part of the game, and finishing some unique skills out there was cool.
Possibly killing off your spouse or main companion was wild. I can't recall having the possibility happen in a game like this before. That messed me up for a bit.
The looping gameplay with insane universes was innovative. A bit tedious to achieve but still neat
At best I can agree it's not the most innovative, but bit apparently some people did. I think hifirush or Shadow of doubt should be there. But that's just me.
To be fair, "game of the year" feels like it's meant to measure popularity, while "most innovative" sounds like it shouls measure how innovative a game is, which is perhaps why the two awards get such different reactions.
Well tbf as well, innovative is as subjective as game of the year, what seems to be innovative to some might not be one for another. It's hard to define "innovation" because it's simply a process of putting in change on an established thing. Try google "innovative product of (year)" and you might see a tons of "isn't it just x but y" product.
In my case i haven't played Starfield nor Baldur's Gate 3 so i wouldn't know whether they deserve the award or not, if people think it does, hey, more power to them. Steam Award is a popularity contest voted by people anyway, taking it seriously is missing the point.
innovative is as subjective as game of the year
I don't think I've actually heard a single person unironically assert Starfield is 'innovative'...
Not saying you did. I'm saying while 'innovative' might be subjective, it's hard to see how it actually could deserve the 'most innovative' title when practically nobody would agree to that claim. It's fairly obvious the vote had little to do with the actual game.
Even if they think it is, looking at todays online environment, i understand why it's not an open statement. I remember the game is well received on launch, then it slowly slip to mixed and negative a month or so later, i shaped my opinion based on this.
For comparison, No Man Sky won Innovative Award by GDC for the launch version.
I don't really take award seriously, less so with Steam Award. Watching people react to it is still funny though, ngl.
seeing as we are the ones voting I don't think it reflects steam as a platform - just gamers
That‘s a user-vote, no? I can‘t say I‘m surprised that there‘s some headscratchers, I doubt the average user knows what innovative gameplay is supposed to be. They should let people vote as they did, then curate the top 20 of each category into 10 fitting games so those that don‘t match the award category are out, and then let people put their final vote between those 10.
That‘s a user-vote, no? I can‘t say I‘m surprised that there‘s some headscratchers, I doubt the average user knows what innovative gameplay is supposed to be.
Valve incentivized its users to vote in all categories.
Not only incentivized it, but put certain games at the front of all of the categories. I don't know if those games were already voted on by other players, or paid for ads by the companies themselves, but I know that I was presented with games that I didn't feel fit into the category they were in. Personally, though, I really don't give a shit about awards. I can't think of any, aside from some book awards, that aren't bought and paid for popularity contest.
Most people probably didn't even recognize the other games. I only know about Shadow of Doubt (which I think should have won) because Yahtzee made a video about it.
It was cool at first, but the issue is you lockpick things every 5 seconds and get almost nothing for it but the minigame takes way too long. Maybe if there were less things to lockpick and if there was something acctually worth it inside each time (and not just 1 in 100) then it might not be so bad
Digipicking and a builder for a ship you can't meaningfully use were the only refreshing and engaging mechanics in that game.
Winning this award has done so much more damage to Bethesda than I'm sure they could ever have expected.
i couldn't even get through the tutorial, space skinned skyrim is a about as innovating as a subscription model for a new app.
Even if it weren't for all of the problems the game has it's hardly innovative. I don't think a Bethesda game has been innovative ever. They didn't even invent the fallout franchise.
Fallout 3: Find your dad!
Fallout New Vegas: Your quest for revenge will lead you right into the middle of a political struggle which will decide whether this post-apocalypse society will fall to fascism, a corrupt republic that's two bad elections away from fascism, a technofascist, your rule, etc.
Fallout 4: Find your son!
I don't think a Bethesda game has been innovative ever.
Arena was pretty special in 1994. Day/night cycles, dynamic weather, procedural generation to create one of the biggest maps for a game even now...
It's interesting to keep in mind the basically no one who worked on that game still works for Bethesda.
It was indeed quite innovative. Was the first game I ever installed on my HDD that refused to run at any acceptable level, without any warning anywhere that it needed to be on SSD or not at all.
That was Alan Wake 2 for me, except they innovated one step further. I had to reinstall it on my NVME drive because my SATA SSD apparently wasn't fast enough.
That's excessive that it requires an NVMe drive to work at all. It's a tech that's really only about a decade old and plenty of people keep dinosaurs much older than a decade running and even game on them. Heck my SATA SSD which predates NVME is still my primary game storage device and it shows no signs of failing anytime soon. Fun fact, my Z97 motherboard was one of the first on the market to include NVME m.2 slots but did not support booting to PCIe slots, so neither those newfangled PCIe SSDs nor newfangled NVME drives could be booted, but it did have NVME support enabled as a later BIOS update!
On the other hand, I suppose we are approaching Windows 10 EOL in less than 2 years, and Windows 11 technically does not support CPU generations old enough to not include NVME support so that does make it a safer bet, but still not a great thing to require
It's in the system requirements but even games that list an SSD as required there still sometimes work fine on a hard disk.
You're right it was in fact in the requirements and there were articles in June talking about how it was the first game to require it. I missed it then, and when I looked up why the game was barely running I saw a bunch of rage articles about how "nobody was warned". My bad
To be fair, that's on them for not giving the option of allowing PC players to play with low res textures. The game uses 2048 for them, you can download a mod that uses them at either 256 or 512, for instance. Blocky and muddy, but that'd save fuckloads of space and load times.
I can't believe shadow of doubt didn't win it. I guess it just isn't popular enough.
As much as I like Shadow of Doubt, i equally dislike many things about it that, based on the devs replies to forum posts in the game's discussion page, aren't going to ever be addressed.
It certainly is worthy of the innovation award tho.
The way that they were able to use their toolset to make space, actually super cool. Especially when you start to poke at it a little and see how the clock actually ticks. BUT, it doesn’t really serve fun. Like I bet there is a morrowind technical dev somewhere who shit their pants when they saw it but for the rest of us, it ends up feeling bland.
So there was some interesting innovation, but it did not serve gameplay. Strange award to give that game. The strongest thing they do is level design and all the bespoke levels are really good. That is a compliment I can give starfield without any reservation.
They did a great job at actually simulating space and such but it's a shame that interacting with it is so boring.
I played way too much of this game and enjoyed most definitely more than the average player. And uh yeah I'm certain steam users are just making a mockery but such is the Internet haha.
