Look guys, I'm absolutely no one and I may be in the minority here. But just a suggestion: Get more color options on your stuff. The black gamer T-shirt/Hoodie is about as lame and cliche as Call of Duty. You don't have to get all the colors of the rainbow either, just the option to choose between white or black tees would be a good improvement, and one that will help you out to stand out among the sea of Black gamer shirts with [INSERT GAME LOGO HERE]

Remember Total Biscuits Yearly "Arbitrary Awards"? Those where good times.

Already got my second wind pride phoenix shirt, loving that so far! Gorgeous design, and it supports a thing I love. Good stuff.

That emotion-based game awards system you presented at the end is baller, I would back that

Cries in International Shipping. Any UK suppliers....??

I predict Undertale will sweep a lot of awards there.

*best came*

Considering how long it would be and that would be a lot of scripting/editing to do, it would probably work best as an episode of Windbreaker.

@@godminnette2 yea I could imagine it being a series, one episode for each year's retrospective

That could be really neat, plus all the hindsight of what has actually stayed with you over the years and what *actually* shaped and changed the industry.

It really speaks to the professionnalism of press and influencers that spend their life talking about games, yeah

Yeah, they seem to treat indie more as a genre or aesthetic than anything else. Or maybe these days any game that isn't some massive triple-a tentpole title is considered indie.

@@Fachewachewa Where does that fit in? Second Wind is technically also "Press and Influencers", they're just independent ones.

@@gwen9939 Nominees and winners are selected by the jury, and the jury is made of press and influencers from around the world. Geoff and his team didn't decide to call Dave the Diver and indie game, journalists did. (and the trick is that they can then complain about Geoff and the Game Awards because they call Dave the Diver an indie game, it's the perfect crime)

​@@chronicbrightside8757 right? Indies can go through so many genres that placing them in a single category is beyond disrespectful just like putting racing/sports in the same one when they're so different from one another

If we want to maken categories that work we need to rate game components separately, and have multiple categories in each component. Narative, aesthetic, design, audio. But even when doing that, no awards show covers everything. Where are the best racing game and best MMO? Lmao.

@@635574 In fairness, MMOs are such a weird genre to try and award. If WoW or FF14 releases an expansion, does that mean it gets to be nominated alongside newcomers? That hardly feels fair to me, since you're pitting titanic games that have stood the test of time against the new kid on the block that may drop off the face of the earth in the near future; New World, for example, was the hot new shit right up until it wasn't, and now it struggles to hit 20k players some months. If there's a year where there are no newcomers, are you just pitting the big, long-established titles that are still around against each other? And that's not to mention how broad MMO is without diving into sub-genres; how do you compare an MMORPG like WoW against a genre clusterfuck like Roblox? How do you compare those against whatever the heck Second Life is? It'd be weird to try and derive a standard of quality from games that are doing completely different things.

'The TotalBiscuit Memorial Awards' has a nice ring to it, no?

Nerdcubed does the same sorts thing every year for Christmas, 25 games winning random awards

@@635574 I think that you are mixing game components with game Genre, and that is exactly the point. Judge a game by its aesthetic, or audio design, regardless of the game mechanisms or marketing positioning ("best mechanic" or "best innovative mechanics" can also be a category). it will be much harder to judge that objectively but this is also why the reward will be so much more satisfying. Take a look at which games Transistor was competing with (Arbitrary award 2014, around 32:30 time mark) or sound tract (around 2:30)

well, the steam awards are community voted, and thus, has a lot of trolling Like, look at what Starfield got as an award, if that isn't making fun of it idk what is

@@MiaWinter98 Starfield indeed got that award to make fun of its lack of what the award says.

@@MiaWinter98 As well as Red Dead Redemption 2 winning the "Labor of Love" award, which is basically the VGA equivalent to "Best Ongoing Game", despite RDR2's online mode being put in maintenance mode.

@@MiaWinter98 Did it win the _"Oh look, it IS another The Bethesda Game, what a surprise~"_ award?

Gamy McGameFace: The steam awards for short.

I'd happily watch that awards ceremony too.

Any video game awards ceremony in which the mainstream Games Industry ("games _industry"..._ sounds kinda dystopian, dunnit?) has no say in anything, is a ceremony with at least some potential merit. People are all up their own asses about little kids being given participation trophies, but when corporations decide their own product just won the Crazy Amazing Award at their Hip With The Kids Awards, that just shows it's a good game?

"Winner of the Golden Wind" will look great on any box. Or "Vento Aureo" if you want to attract *that* crowd.

Isn't that basically the best, worst, and blandest games list?

I would really be into this.

As well as an award ceremony for bland games.

Way too much work to come up with just a few nominations ! ... Well, this year they had to put remakes and expansion packs just to have enough, so maybe you're on to something

@@travismcnasty4239 No, salt counts as a flavor.

Given how much the Razzies are a complete dumpster fire, I’d rather us not. There’s way too much negativity in the gaming space already these days, anything like the Razzies would quickly descend into bullying and rage-bait bullshit.

The Golden Extraterrestrial awards. Get it? Atari ET? I'll see myself out

I'd argue that art needs to make you feel something, otherwise it isn't art.

What about game that evoke multiple emotions ? Using emotions would result in the same loosely defined categories

@@ni9274 Even still, it's far easier to broad stroke emotions because they're universal. The problem with the genre categories is that they're terms made up specifically for the medium and hardly have any sort of grander context to fully understand what it represents.

Didn't the Steam asswarts do something like that? Or at least I seem to recall it asking me shit like which game I sucked at and still played.

Award for the game that made me feel horniest goes to... Baldur's Gate 3. Well, fiddlesticks.

That’s the only real problem?

To be fair Baldur's Gate earned those rewards after years of development and early access. I won't complain about that unlike the past 2 years where God of War and last of us 2 were snatching awards left and right regardless of category.

That's true for a lot of awards shows though. Because obviously the game/movie/show of the year nominees would get a lot of things right and when you have so many judges who aren't allowed to communicate with each other, the big stuff will stand out more

​@@Did_No_Wrongtlou2 winning best action game over Doom Eternal is what convinced me to never take the VGAS seriously

@@negative6442 the message takes priority over reality

They give definitions of categories on their site. Still kinda bs.

"Wait, so we... _don't_ just say what the suitmans want us to? And this is allowed, legally? Are we sure?" -Mainstream Games Media

The game industry is as transparent as those PNGs with a checkered background

everyone and their grandma is disappointed dw

As Yahtzee said, it would have won in any sane world. It was astonishingly creative and an instant hit, a super fun labor of love with a clear and expressive creative vision. Just too subversive for the likes of TGAs.

Everyone was. Even people who hadn't played it yet, like me!

​@@dorongrossman-naples9207not subversive, the dev just didn't have the means to bribe Geoff since the very beginning. Dave the Diver had no business usurping it's spot in the Best Indies division yet here we are.

at least it was a smashing success and people loved it which in the end is what matters

Would SMB Wonder, ironically enough, not qualify for this category?

So Pizza Tower is like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard?

@@vitorpr1245 come to think of it, a song like Robot Stop feels weirdly fitting for Pizza Tower. I could totally see that playing as you enter Lap 2 on a P-rank attempt

Yeah, Pokemon, Diablo, and Disco Elysium are all RPGs. Different subcategories, but still RPGs. I get why, but trying to say one is "a superior RPG" seems impossible since it means different things in each case. Genres are helpful shorthand for mechanics or style, but games have such a huge variety, beyond other mediums, that have a category as broad as "Best RPG" seems like a mistake.

Same can be said about Larian, with Vincke wearing that full plate armor to the ceremony

That’s a fantastic idea haha, I think it’d be even better if the money then went to a relevant charity so that a worthy cause would gain some money and possibly exposure.

The issue with that is that it heavily rewards games that focus on just one of the three, leading to the possibility that runner-ups will devolve into almost exclusively walking sims, arcade games, and skinner boxes, and the occasional masterpiece for GOTY.

What's this theory from? seems quite flawed without context

@@dogehkiindogeborn5339 It's one of Yahtzee's old columns from That Other Channel. I think about ten years ago now. The brief cut of the theory is that what makes games good can be distilled to those three pillars (and what makes games bad lately has been an excessive focus on Catharsis).

I genuinely want good games to get some recognition because good games are often desperately in need of getting some free publicity. Unfortunately there never seems to be any game awards ceremonies that are focused on actually choosing the best games because they are the best games.

@@davidaitken8503 But the problem is that "best" is different for so many people.

@@davidaitken8503 The main problem is that all these shows are rotten to their core by design because they have to, the general audience doesn't like random shmucks on the internet that tells you that the best game of the year is one that looks like one guy made it in his bedroom (don't kill me, I love pizza tower as much as everyone else) and as seen by the steam awards and the result's backlash it seems like the general audience can't decide what they want either. So we're left with one option and that is letting the gaming outlets decide for us, like all their decisions it's mostly inflicted by money and it's also how they get their voice heard so loudly that we just accept it as "official".

The Oscars have been a joke for decades

@@SavageGreywolf If anything, the Oscars are even more predictable than the Game Awards.

Industry that begrudgingly rely on the arts are like your estranged dad: they will never admit to having emotions, despite any somewhat functional relationship with it relying on them

Incorrect. The bland AAA games will win those anyway. Again, the point isn't to be accurate. It's to pick the most bombastic games to win. Best game that made me cry? Whatever new Assassin's Creed. Best game that made me smile? Here's the new Nintendo game. Angry? Here's the biggest multiplayer shooter of the year. Etc.

in 2023 only Hogwart Legacy, Diablo 4, Immortal of Aveum and the avatar game fit your description of what most AAA games are supposed to be, most AAA games in 2023 were not bland at all and were clearly not designed to leave the player "dissatisfied enough" . This year we got: Baldur's Gate 3 (Imo it's AAA since it has a AAA budget and Larian is the size of AAA studio), Armored Core 6, Phantom Liberty, Alan Wake 2, Re4 and Dead Space remakes, SF6, TOTK, Final Fantasy 16, Spiderman 2, Super Mario Bross Wonder.

@@ni9274 Tears of the Kingdom didn't leave me satisfied though. I found it an immensely boring retread, with all the interesting innovation done in the previous game just copy and pasted.

Did you mean to say "engaged enough to pay"?

You know it really affected Yatzee too because he had not the heart to replace her name with something more stupid for comedic effect xD

How dare Yahtzee remind me of Spiritfarer out of nowhere?!

That game does yank on the heartstrings. A bit much, perhaps; felt like a worn out heart-fiddle by the end of it. But it does touch on moving subjects and thought-provoking situations, which is more than most games have the guts to even attempt.

@@hazukichanx408 I absolutely agree that I felt worn the fuck out after her death then came the others

Don't forget the awards for best Jimminy Cockthroat and best Ghost Train Ride.

The result would probably always be "whatever Call of Duty has been released", as nowadays those seem to be the only Spunkgargleweewee games whose existence is at least recognized. For the Jiminy Cockthroat award of 2023 I nominate Avatar Frontiers of Pandora. It's bland as hell, but well made and sufficiently fun.

​@@NeovanGothlet's call it "the most adequate trendchaser" award.

The score is also probably the best part of that game.

Like seriously. If you think it didn't deserve best soundtrack, try and find a track from any game last year better than Find The Flame.

Doesn’t hurt either that due to how the Game Awards classifies live service he essentially hasn’t been eligible for a music VGA for years despite being one of the more recognizable/liked composers in the industry.

Also, Final Fantasy (and the best JRPGS in general) tend to have really stellar soundtracks. I mean, Nobuo Uematsu is a legend for his work on the FF series, but just about every big JRPG series I've played has soundtracks that stand out as one of their strongest attributes. Also, I'm still mad that Xenoblade 3 got snubbed for Best Soundtrack last year.

Yeah I felt iffy about how readily Yahtzee dismissed FFXVI on winning best music. OK yes, the story and gameplay were pretty milquetoast, but if any game deserved an award for its music it was FFXVI. The soundtrack was beyond incredible and Soken deserved to be recognized for it. Frankly, I feel sorry for HiFi Rush coming out in the same year.

I think tagging is an acceptable approach since it lets you know what genre *elements* a game has, as long as prospective buyers understand that they should probably still look at a few reviews and gameplay footage to understand exactly how all those elements fit together. For example, one of my favourite series of all time, Monster Hunter, can at times be: - a slow Ecologist Simulator where you run around collecting plants and beetles - a Dark Souls-esque boss gauntlet where you fight against giant gribblies - a min-maxing stat nerdathon where you optimise the heck out of your gear - a creative dress-'em-up in which you can show off cool ensembles you've put together Some things, like the ecology and dress-up, you can more or less ignore if you're not really into them, but if you don't like action-packed boss fights and gear upgrading then you're going to have a BAD TIME in Monster Hunter. I dislike cheese, but I like pizza. Sometimes it isn't what's IN a thing that matters, but whether that stuff complements the other stuff (to put it in academic terms).

No it does. Remember Kojima is arguably the most well known game auteurs with a large fanbase. It fits in with the "please established figureheads I beg of you think games are art." Narrative to the game awards But he also just really like sucking Kojima off to not denying that

Amusingly, much of the "industry" was uninvolved or outright unaware of the vtuber awards. The big corps had nothing to do with them and many of the winners had to be informed by fans that they won, lol. It was still ultimately hype-driven, though, just in a more populist fashion since the awards were audience-voted. Winners were mostly dictated by which nominee had the largest (English-speaking) audience. TGA is more interesting to me because you can at least have some conversation about the bias of the award voters, like this video does.

@@TheFezHat selection method aside, calling the thing hype driven isn't even a problem because the whole function of the format is to drive attention. I mostly just saying that throwing a party to give your friends pats on the back is exactly what awards have been forever.

"I just named 6 AAA games that I remembered coming out this year" I think that's the true essence of these awards. It's a "what games were we talking about the most this year (in a good way) & still talk about now?" competition.

That's a very pessimistic view I feel. "The only reason indies are nominated or even won is just to keep up an illusion." I don't believe that.

It Takes Two is published by EA, not indie. Even the "best indie" award on TGA is mostly "AAA' indies. Smaller studios rarely make the nominees even if they made better games.

Indie game aren't on the same scale in term of popularity so it's pretty reasonable they won't show up on a mainstream award show.

There's no narrative, no one is throwing one indie in there for any purpose because no one can individually decide (or deliberate with the rest of the jury to decide) who's a nominee. It's just popularity votes.

It mostly works for the Steam Awards.

*Licking/smacking his chops on mic with glee*

Ditto. I still miss the yellow background though.

@@SimuLord And also, from a visible production scale perspective of Indie (the ONLY metric that really matters), Stray is just...completely, obviously, a AA game?

@@SimuLord yeah, as I said in a video, replace the damn cat with a scrawny dog and boom, nobody would care anymore. And although presentation is important, in the case of Stray you can clearly see how 90% of that game is “cat”, and the remaining 10% is a bland walking sim with a plot that pretends to be anything more than an excuse for the levels to exist.

@@roboknobthesnob So, in a nutshell... 'needs more cat.' Gotcha!

@@hazukichanx408 you have a future in the gaming industry

No the most baffling one is Dave the diver getting nominated since it's made by a studio that's owned by Nexon. The south korean game publisher that's pretty damn far from indie.

I predict the comment above will be the top comment.

Didn’t he give up his side of ownership?

​@@scoticvsgossage9378 the bar no longer exists. But at the time I visited, he certainly worked there because he served me.

Man is really good I’m just happy his music was acknowledged. My favorite song he did was To the Edge and that was before I learned he did it while dealing with cancer just makes the song hit harder. The bahamut fight in 16 was great too as my friend put it “Beethoven bath salts”

I feel like worst and blandest have some merits but maybe rather than making the best a strict top 5 give each nominee a title like that. Several of the top 5 have had yahtzee say stuff like "I didn't want two put these two similair games here so I picked one" so it has a lot of merit.