Steam Awards are Kind of Silly

[FarAway Sooner]

So, I was checking my Steam account to seek some tech support for Endless Space 2 (after playing for 30 minutes, my mouse will only zoom in or out at 600 miles per hour!), and I saw an ad for the 2018 Steam gaming awards.  I clicked on the list for "Game of the Year", and they're all mega-blockbuster titles.

If they're just going by "Best-selling Game of the Year", that's okay, but call it that.  2 of the 5 nominees (including the winner) had "Mixed" reviews.  Same thing with their "Labor of Love" category.  I'm generally not very impressed by Steam Reviews.  But a "Mixed" rating on Steam seems to basically mean that a game is Shite.

I get that Steam has to make their publishers happy.  Maybe they should just title it the "Valve Gives their Best Publishers a Bologna Sandwich for 2018" Award?

[Huw the Poo]

Yeah I completely agree with you.  People complain about awards that are decided entirely by a jury, but then when the great unwashed are given control, look what happens.  Pathetic.  GTA5, labour of love?  Come the fuck on.

Oh and unless I'm mistaken, none of the winners were even released in 2018.  This would have been trivial for Valve to enforce as release dates are already stored in the Steam database.

[Tpek]

GTA5, labour of love? 

Love of money.

That said, it is a pretty fun game.

[bbmike]

I think by "kind of" you meant "completely". 

[Yskonyn]

  GTA5, labour of love?  Come the fuck on.

I agree about the point you make about release year, but come one man, what's not a labour of love about GTA 5?!
The main characters are nicely developed, the story is smart with humour, violence and wackyness with all kinds of references to classic gangster/cops and robbers movies and clichés.
The gameworld is alive with glorious character and brimming with content!
What the heck is NOT a labour of love with this game???

[Father Ted]

Well, I consider a "labour of love" to be something that the creator put a lot of time and effort into simply to see it exist, rather than to make money out of it.  So, in gaming terms, I'd be looking for a small development team making a (probably niche) game in their spare time for that category.  For instance, isn't there a very old school RPG which was released last year after 20 years (or something ) development by one guy?

[FarAway Sooner]

Steam defines "Labour of Love" as a game that got lots of post-release support.  For something like that, I think not fixing it to the current year makes sense. 

For the others, I do agree that you should at least limit the release date to sometime in the last 18 months of the time-period ending the year of the award.

Is this just based on letting everybody vote?  If so, they ought to just retitle things "Most Popular Game of the Year".  If that's all it is, I guess I know now why the results all seemed so lame...

[Huw the Poo]

I agree about the point you make about release year, but come one man, what's not a labour of love about GTA 5?!
The main characters are nicely developed, the story is smart with humour, violence and wackyness with all kinds of references to classic gangster/cops and robbers movies and clichés.
The gameworld is alive with glorious character and brimming with content!
What the heck is NOT a labour of love with this game???

GTA5 is just another game in the series, very similar to the previous iterations.  It only gets post-release support because Rockstar are continuing to make staggering cash out of it.  It's almost a complete opposite of the spirit of such an award.

You know who was way more deserving?  Hello Games.  Say what you like about No Man's Sky, HG have slaved over it for years since its release, adding to it enormously to the point where it's almost a complete new game, all without asking for another penny from anyone.

That's a labour of love.

[Yskonyn]

(Not specifically pointed at Huw, just taking your post as an example to hopefully emphasize my point)

I feel its a pretty big lack of recognition for those having worked on GTA5.
Yes, its the fifth game in the series, however the series spans several generations of hardware. I agree with your reasoning if it were Madden, Fifa or CoD, but the time in between releases of the various GTA games have been quite long.
Rockstar only charges people for extra money in GTA Online, which arguably is a different game entirely from GTA story mode.
And besides that, you aren't locked out of content from GTA Online if you don't pay. Its cosmetics or shortcuts as far as I know, so people pay voluntarily and that happens to make them a good chunck of cash. A different intention of creating something if you ask me.

Do you think Digital Extremes would keep Warframe running if they didn't make a good chunk of cash on it? Of course not. But that doesn't invalidate the fact that Warframe IS a labour of love for the studio, as you have seen in the documentary on YT. They kept on trying to make THEIR space ninja game and finally succeeded after years of hitting walls, fumbled deals and no interest from various parties.
Yet now the project has grown so much (and people need to eat and pay bills) that the fact of the matter is that they need to keep making money off of the game. Is there a point where Warframe then ceases being a labour of love? I don't think so.