Every year, the video game media starts buckling down and compiling lists. These lists, whether they’re for Best Racing Game or Best Online Shooter, always culminate in the coveted Game of the Year award. It’s a grand title that gamers everywhere eagerly anticipate and attempt to predict.

Except there’s one problem; Game of the Year is almost entirely subjective. Sure, it’s a great marketing ploy, and there are probably tens of developers out there who would love to get their hands on a prestigious, elusive digital trophy. Especially the ones handed out by Gamer Bob, founder and writer of Gamer Bob’s Gamer Blog.

What, you’ve never heard of Gamer Bob, or his Gamer Blog? Well no one else has, either. But that won’t stop him from putting together his personal list of the most cherished games of 2017, with a cute little award graphic and maybe even a YouTube video to go announce it on. It will be an epic narrowing down of countless titles into a pristine list of the top ten games of the last 12 months, capped off by the grand reveal of the 2017 Champion of Video Games. It will take him four days to record and edit. It will get a hundred views.

The reason I don’t have a Game of the Year list is the same reason Gamer Bob shouldn’t have one either. Nobody cares. Nobody should care. GotY discussions are great for message boards and forums, where people can argue over which game gets their vote and why, but as far as a one-sided grand announcement from someone with no voice in the industry, it’s meaningless. In fact, even the major websites hold little water. Here’s why:

  1. Unless Gamer Bob is one rich s.o.b., I doubt he has access to every game released that year. His list is limited to what he either had access to, or he’s taking others’ words for it and including popular games he hasn’t played himself. Gamer Bob is false.
  2. Gamer Bob has interesting taste. He loves indie titles, but doesn’t care for big publisher, AAA games. He hates platformers, but loves shooters. But only indie shooters. Gamer Bob is biased.
  3. If Gamer Bob is honest, and his list comprises of games that he has played, taking note of his specific tastes in video games, then his list is noticeably skewed toward a specific genre or platform, which in turn makes a Game of the Year discussion kind of a moot point.

Gamer Bob is limited by the fact that the only point of view taken into consideration is Gamer Bob’s. Unless he takes a poll and questions hundreds, if not thousands of gamers and tallies their votes, then we are still only getting the opinion of one single person. Gamer Bob has to ask himself, what makes a Game of the Year contender? Is it fun? Is it technical accomplishments? Both?

I’m gonna put myself in Gamer Bob’s shoes for a moment, because despite the parallels, Gamer Bob is not really a clever stand-in for PopCult & Pinups. But if it were, here’s an example of my point. By now most of the gaming sites have posted their results, and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey were clear favorites. I owned and played Zelda BotW. As a huge Zelda fan, I was quite disappointed. I felt the open world tedious and kinda boring. That’s my opinion. I also own Super Mario Odyssey, and am currently playing my way through it. It’s a great, great game… for thirty minutes at a time. After that I have to play something different.

Legend of Zelda wouldn’t come close to being on my game of the year list, and Mario, while making an appearance, may not even crack the top three. You know what would? Ghost Recon Wildlands.

I think I literally heard the fanboys faint as typed that. That game, as it stands now, was never even mentioned in any Game of the Year discussions I read. Not even close. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t play the ever-loving shit out of that game earlier this year. I completed every mission, collected every piece of intel and unlockable I could, and then I kept coming back for the community events. Currently I’m still trying to kill the Predator (seriously, fuck that thing.) I have well over 100 hours logged into that game, and it’s still climbing. This isn’t an MMO or online shooter that is designed to milk you for every minute it can (though it does have an online component that I never play). I just enjoyed it that much.

Of course, were I (or Gamer Bob) to actually compile and publish this list, with Ghost Recon sitting in the number one spot, we’d be accused of being elitist, or hipster, or whatever the fuck else you can think of as a means to explain why we didn’t choose the “clear” winner in Zelda or Mario. Because the gaming community as a whole has the tendency to adopt a mob mentality, you’re either voting for Zelda because everyone else is doing it, or you’re voting for something else, which is wrong!

Reviewers often get flack for rating the score of a game dramatically lower than the majority of other outlets, being blamed for not “getting it” or reviewing a game outside of their wheelhouse, or even going as far as to say it was reviewed low for the clicks. Everyone has to know why the amazing game was rated so much lower, right? Game of the Year lists aren’t much different.

If Gamer Bob’s Gamer Blog dared to nominate something as dramatically off the wall as Ghost Recon Wildlands, there would be imaginary hell to pay. So therefore, Gamer Bob might just list Zelda as his game of the year, despite his own personal feelings toward the game, just to be diplomatic about it and save himself the headache. Which is why, even though they’re an entertaining debate, Game of the Year lists are pretty much pointless, especially in a day and age where publishers release GotY editions of games that were never GotY. Except maybe on Gamer Bob’s Gamer Blog!

Besides, the gaming industry now has its own butt-sniffing event in the form of The Game Awards. After that little shin-dig, who gives a flying fig what we have to say anyway?

Also, fuck the Oscars!