Maybe The Real Game Of The Year Was The Friends Jordan Oloman Made Along The Way | Winter Spectacular 2022

What does it mean to be The Game Of The Year? Is it about box sales and digital downloads? Statuettes and critical acclaim? What about an interruption from the Bill Clinton Kid? As the industry cascades into middle age, with hundreds of new games launching every year, the idea of having an arbitrary game of the year is beginning to lose all of its meaning — beyond enabling heinous crimes against box art. To take one example, some people were pretty adamant, without much justification, that Days Gone was their GOTY in 2019, and thanks to the influx of individualism that social media has provided us, we had to encounter that opinion, and respect it, knowing that was factually impossible considering Disco Elysium came out in the same 12 month period. So it goes. 

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But, in the spirit of preserving the holy industry tradition that is the end-of-year op-ed (which is now fashionably late), let’s play into this absurd game. If you asked me to pick my game of the year for 2022, I’d have to say Neon White. It just feels destined to be a cool cultural artefact with its immaculate Source Engine surf-map vibes. But I haven’t finished it, so is that fair to say, it was the best thing I played this year? On the other hand, I did finish Return to Monkey Island and was stupefied by its sentimentality, but it still doesn’t feel right to single it out. Out of its historical context, would it still shine?

If we’re going off of game time, then I suppose we all must cede to the true king of 2022, Vampire Survivors, even if we’re not all that proud of the mindless hours we sunk into it. I am proud, however, of the 120 hours I spent tuning my character build and unravelling the mysteries of Elden Ring, only to drop it like a sack of potatoes at the gates of Leyndell. Sorry, Ranni. 

We could all do with a hug after this year.

And I appreciate you, God of War: Ragnarok, but I’m juggling several freelance gigs in the busiest period of the year. How am I meant to beat you if I’ve not been commissioned to review you or at least write a guide? 

To be blisteringly obvious for a second, there are too many good games to play and not enough time. This is starting to sound like a cry for help, but how is anyone with a full life meant to fit in all of the Game of the Year contenders in 365 days? And without experiencing them all, can you genuinely argue that one is definitive?

It’s hard to lament a rising quality bar, but it feels like my backlog is scared of its own backlog at this point. The disheartening race-to-the-bottom expectation for every AAA game to have (at the very least) a 60-hour content pipeline isn’t helping matters either, even if I do tend to give the clearly soulless ones a wide berth.

How much garlic can you fit on a pizza?

It can feel like accelerated entropy up top, but broadly, more is better, right? Even if we’re far from a decent balance, awards-wise. The big gongs still go to the prestige games, but at least it’s not just the big three getting a look in anymore. Games without immediate commercial or critical acclaim can find a die-hard audience lauding them as the GOTY. And, in what can only be expected from an adolescent indie scene, subcultures are cropping up to nurture grassroots niches. Boomer shooters, Y2K platformers and WarioLand spiritual successors — Wariolikes? — (s/o Pizza Tower) are hopefully starting to flesh out the For Your Consideration pool. It’s good that a game doesn’t need a big publisher or a marketing budget to make an impact anymore, even though it will quickly get one if it runs the numbers with a tasty GIF on Twitter.

This Daedalian landscape we’ve found ourselves in is why I think we need a new approach to Game of the Year consideration.  We can’t keep having heated arguments over which million-dollar photogrammetry fest has the best greebles each November. I don’t want to see folk threatening to kick each other's heads off over the idea of a remake like Dead Space qualifying for the top prize (there’s a nauseating amount at this point, so they’re just going to have to!). Let’s sunset “well, from a graphical perspective” and the discounting of certain platforms or whatever hamstrung mental jargon gymnastics we put ourselves through. From where I’m sitting, there clearly can’t only be one — so why do we inevitably concur and give a singular game most of the love? 

Jet Set Heaven.

We can get so lost in the proverbial sauce of industry speak and end up settling on the one experience that the loudest voices are talking about, defending it with blind faith. We need to get away from this exclusionary mentality and forget about what a game might be doing for ‘the medium’ at large. I want to know what it did for you. Strip it all back and tell me which games hit your heart that given year. And if you feel up to it, try to capture and express that. Build out their world with your own creative contributions. Take a video and share the moments that grabbed you. Write about the specific disciplines that elevated them, and maybe shout out the people responsible. Mock up an old-school poster, remix a soundtrack… make a game in Bitsy about why Jet Set Radio Future rules. Ok, that last one would just be for me, but you know, go nuts. 

Editor’s note: Thanks for not sending me any screenshots of the teeth level, Jordan.

I don’t know about you, but lately, it’s often been a game that did not launch in the catchment period that comes to characterise my year. In the lockdown of 2020, it was escaping to the busy streets of Kamurocho in 2019’s Judgment and, later, the camaraderie and comfort of online versus with my friends in decade old classic, Left 4 Dead 2. In 2021 it was the profound strangeness of the clearly influential Silent Hill 4: The Room, even though Psychonauts 2, the worth-the-wait sequel to my most formative childhood game, also landed in August.

There’s such a rich library of games across several generations, readily available to us now in a way that was unheard of even a decade ago. So it only feels fair to open up the floor and allow the past to enrich, or even define, the present. It’s fairly common when reading a review of a brand new game to see favourable comparisons to classics, so why can’t the opposite perspective be just as informative? Older games, with their technical limitations and refreshing brevity, can tell us plenty about what’s right and wrong with the current milieu. Just watch this six-hour Tim Rogers video about Boku No Natsuyasumi!

Fond memories, sustained community interest and compelling player storytelling trump individual awards when it comes to a game getting its dues in the annals of history. Silent Hill 2 didn’t win any major awards when it came out in 2001, but people still (clearly) care about its unreplicated atmosphere. Collectively, we’re all perpetually cooing over the controller-clutching moments that meant the most to us, regardless of where they landed in our lives. 

So when you’re sitting there later this year, thinking about Quote Retweeting some harmless praise with ‘The weapon durability makes Tears of the Kingdom fucking shit, actually,’ consider that you could be using that time to figure out and express why, exactly, did Phendana Drifts in Metroid Prime Remastered make you react like the food critic at the climax of Ratatotuille… 

Jordan Oloman - The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Verge, IGN, NME, Future Games Show, Edge Magazine & More
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