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Everyone is mad about this but I still don’t understand how RDR2 was even nominated for Labor of Love, let alone won.
It’s a popularity vote, players nominated and voted for the games. So they just trolled the votes for this and Starfield
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.
The steam awards has paragraphs?
Only write-ups I could see was for the description of the award. I don’t remember if the games had write-ups during the voting period though.
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.
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The joke is the innovation is having the balls to not innovate
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.
Fan votes have been and will always be popularity contests.
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.
It almost seems tongue in cheek, especially with rddr2 winning the labor of love.
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.
I watched 3 people stream it in its entirety.
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
Ah, thanks for clarifying, or explaining how it actually happened. 👍
This was a popular game amongst streamers this year.
2006: Make oblivion
2007-2022: Recycle gameplay for other IPs
2023: Make oblivion in space
Truly innovative
I’d play the hell out of it if it’s Oblivion in space
That would be good.
This is TES online in Space, with half of the features replaced by loading screens.
All they had to do was to reskin oblivion and pass it through an AI upscaling for models. Reskin the horse to be a spaceship and you’re done.
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.
Steam Award, it just works.
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’…
I assert nothing though.
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.
Steam awards are a joke
ALL awards are a joke
It’s like the points are made up and don’t mean anything
“Everything is made up and the points don’t matter.”
Sounds like someone never won an award
Get your ears checked, it was typed words
Words that you definitely weren’t awarded for.
seeing as we are the ones voting I don’t think it reflects steam as a platform - just gamers
Steam has nothing to do with this, people voted like that.
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.
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’s for the lock pick mini game.
Which was he first thing I modded out of the game because I hated 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.
It’s completely fan driven so if thats the result, then fans trolled themselves
Is this some 4chan prank?
No, this is real.
Good god all mighty.
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.
