Editor's blog: Top 50 Post-Mortem Comments by Tom Bramwell

But the lists that start the pitchfork-wielding mobs are usually the best ones. Getting people like Peter Moore arguing about the results is way better than the usual list of comments.

Why panda to people how think opinions are facts just because you've placed them in order of how often those opinions occur?
countdowns are fun.

I think that by placing the games in numerical order and encouraging excitement for the higher placings by publishing it ten titles at a time from the bottom up, you are making people read it as a definitive list. So I think the format and intention are clashing a bit there.

I like the EG top 50 and have no problem whatsoever with the way it's presented. I can't really think of any other more democratic way of assembling the top 50, except to give Tom greater editorial control over the final list? Democracy is great in theory as it gives everyone equal say, but then it's not an infallible system (8 years of Bush anyone?)

The EG top 50 was never a list that represented the best each genre has to offer and such a list would be pointless anyway. It does however represent the games that got under the skin of EG contributors and I'm not surprised that a game like FIFA would get overlooked. Personally, I dip in and out of sports games and often go a few years without getting a new footy game. This year I got one though and it was FIFA (thanks to EG's review).

After years of playing PES, I think FIFA09 is probably the best fooball game ever so for that reason alone it deserves a mention here - but I just don't know if it's worth tampering too much with the format in order to please one company exec, however likeable he may be. Perhaps the staff at EG towers could run a survey and see what their readership as a whole want in terms of a top 50?

@Raz76

Only if you didn't read the notes that went with each game ( or at least the ones you were interested in)

I'd put my reputation on the line to say that FIFA 09 grabs PES 2009 by the balls, swings it around its head and smashes its torso to the floor for maximum damage.

Or, it's just a better simulation of football. Turn everything off, auto-switching to zero, game speed to slow and match length to 20 mins. Bliss.

@ Brogan

I think people look at the structure before looking at the content. I'm not making any judgments here, I'm just saying that if you want people to understand your list as a sort of loosely assembled celebration of the year in games, that point could have come across better in the way it was presented.

i agree with rez, you could even change the titles.
best games of 20xx instead of top 50 etc.

but if peter read the comments on this one, he would have also seen that loads of poeple where pissed of about fifa09 being absent.

Ahhh! Brogan has it spot on. The morons who fume over these lists shouldn't be taken seriously. If they can't read the criteria behind the Top 50 you shouldn't bother listening to the reasoning behind their whines.

There are plenty of people who disagree with the list, myself included, but we realise how it's compiled. Hence we're sensible enough not to get our knickers in a twist.

I really enjoy the Top 50 each year - if Peter Moore having a tongue-in-cheek bitch about it successfully manages to change the format, I'll be most disappointed :[

Moore's rebuttal is an interesting read and agreeable read but why out of the entire top 50 does he choose the sublime Bangai-O Spirits to exemplify the games which shouldn't have made the cut?

Different strokes I suppose.

I agree with what Brogan is saying too even if I find the mistake of pander/panda hilarious.

Tomo,

"I really enjoy the Top 50 each year - if Peter Moore having a tongue-in-cheek bitch about it successfully manages to change the format, I'll be most disappointed"

Just to clarify, we'll be looking at options and feedback and may change elements of it, but the core things we all like are very unlikely to be altered. I just wanted to make it clear today that we'll review it, rather than give people the impression I'm not paying attention to what they say. Thanks for your kind words :)

Ok, good to hear :]

@ Brogan: I love panda-ing. They're the best of all the animals.

Tom, keep the lists the way they are. I enjoy the indiosyncratic nature of them!

you could do a "top 50 in no particular order" then people will have to guess which was top by the number of comments and the amount of times people say "omg game of the year" in said comments

One of the options we've talked about (again, this is just us speculating) is 50 games chosen by the traditional method, but listed chronologically with the usual comments, followed by staff top tens and a clearly defined "game of the year" based on those.

But, well, we've got a few months to think it over!

Staff top tens could easily be done, I guess. You could even add it to this (last) year's top 50.
It also gives the mob a head for the spike.

Whatever.

No Valkyria Chronicles still makes the contributors ill-informed gaming chavs.

Couldn't be arsed to comment on such a pathetic list of games from so called 'In the Biz' people... however, this stupid disclaimer and with there being no Dead Space and no Valkyria pretty much sums up you lot do not have a fricken clue what you are talking about.

I have an idea that retains the essence of the whole top 50 thingy, but clarifies the format for the benefit of retards who don't read the explanation at the top.

You already assign each game a level of interest based on ranking within each contributer's list, and the number of lists it appears on.

Instead of then ordering those into a list, why not present them in ascending "buzz" or "heat" or "EG lovedness" or something?

The games would be listed in the same order, but instead of going 50, 49, ... 2, 1 - they would go:

Game A - 12 EG superendorsements
Game N - 17 EG superendorsements
Game D - 32 EG superendorsements

etc.

That way you retain everything about the current format, but you also gain an idea of how close the different games were, i.e. whether the most loved game was in a league of its own, or there were 3 games all loved to very similar degrees at the top.


Obviously you'll need to come up with a better name for the "EG superendorsement" I used in my example.

i suspect a review is up for consideration because LBP was an unpopular no. 1 with the staff. the level of negativity in the staff's comments for the most popular game of the year was shocking. still think quality shone through in the end.

'Kieron Gillen: I spent days begging Tom to let me re-review this after the furore around Oli's review lead to that bulging 2000-posts thread. Because those people seemed to think that Oli's review was somehow negative. They were clearly confused, and I wanted to make it totally clear what a negative review actually looks like. Tom decided it probably wasn't wise. Much like forty-two hour cut-scenes. Remember: Just because it's carefully constructed art made by one of videogames' true auteurs, doesn't mean that it can't be full of s***.'

I would love to read that review!

I hear that the correct algebraic formula for choosing a top 50 games in any given year was written 1.5 billion years ago and can be obtained from the Dwellers of the planet Nasqueron.

-1 for Fifa 09? Damn that'll get the angry mob really, um, angry.

On a side note... keep the top 50 as it is. People will always bitch and moan no matter how its done. And there will always be someone who disagrees with the results and feels it is there duty to re-educate everyone else.

Carry on!

Nice that you explained why Fifa is not there. Simply an amazing game. And i have played many great football games from the Amiga days, to the PS3 and XBox 360

"Most of all it felt like a "stunt" article (series), designed more to draw attention and "be different" than anything else."

Bollocks.

"Couldn't be arsed to comment on such a pathetic list of games from so called 'In the Biz' people... however, this stupid disclaimer and with there being no Dead Space and no Valkyria pretty much sums up you lot do not have a fricken clue what you are talking about."

Utter bollocks.



The trouble with lots of individual staff top 10s is that they make the whole process less pretigious and more confused. I don't know the exact criteria for the current system (isn't there some sort of weighting added?) but TT's idea sounds like an interesting compromise for a problem that doesn't exist. Giving points for appearing on the list and a smaller additional bonus for placement on that list might help. But really I see no problem with it all anyway.

Perhaps you should put an error on everything! No. X + or - 5 places. Sigh.

Can't you just sell the top-10 placings?
Kane & Lynch was my number 1 this year.

I love the format and reading the reactions from the staff to what games make it up the list is all part of the fun.

PETER MOORE. THE TRUE, ORIGINAL AND THE BADDEST FANBOY EVER.

The fact that EG has to yet again explain how the list works and what it is and isn't, is downright depressing.
...
Ooh! In 2009 EG should have every single game reviewed and rated by every single staffer!
That's me being cynical right there.

For me personally, the fact that they explained the list didn't really help, as all it did was show that the staff's leanings towards games and my own leanings towards games have changed radically in the last few years. Seeing a game missed out or a particular game in there was like finding out your friends hate the music you like. Doesn't stop you being friends but you wont asked them about what album to buy.

I don't see why these lists have to please people. It's all about averages. Midnight club LA wasn't in either of the top 50 even though I voted for it. I can confirm that I did not throw a pissy fit, I just assumed not as many people voted for it...

retibra +1

I think the main problem was the top 50 got much more of a fanfare than the readers top 50, which is arguably more important. We know which games you guys liked as we read the reviews. The top place going to a game that a lot of us didn't buy because we didn't think it was worth the money, isn't a surprise as a lot of you chaps get review copy for nowt :)

Could be pretty easy to make a qualified list. First, you get a list of all the reviewed games of the year, and cull the ones scoring less than an eight.

Next, you allow the staff to nominate a few "under the radar" games, personal favourites or games that went un-reviewed for some reason.

Now you have a pretty long list. Get all the contributors together, if possible, and sort the list buy concensus. Record the discussions. Anything that ends up below 40 gets axed, of course. This way, you should get a list that everybody more or less agrees on, more or less. With the editor's vote reserved for resolving locked disputes and tie-breakers, of course.

In this years list, leave out ALL EA games.
That should really piss him off.

Personally, I'd like to see the individual top ten lists from each contributor. Not to bitch, or moan, or point fingers (for that would be pointless not to mention stupid) but becuase a) it would make the entire process open and transparent, b) it'd be interesting to see how certain games placed (LBP being the obvious example) and c) it'd give some context as to the personal preferences of each reviewer that could be refered back to when trying to decide if their view on a specific game is likely to be the same as that of the individual reader.

I know it's tradition but there is obviously also a problem doing the list at the end of december in the backloaded gaming year. Naturally noone can play all the big games coming out october-december and so dry season games like Condemned 2 get a big advantage. Wasn't Crackdown fourth in last year's list too? (not that its a bad game)

Why change the way it's done because some people are too stupid to understand what you're saying? If they get wound up by it that's their problem not yours, right?

@xbendystevex

Because even though the list is enjoyable as it is, there could still be ways of making it even better? I don't get why people are defending it so rigorously, it's obvious reading through the list and the comments that improvements could be made to make it a fairer representation of the contributors' input and so reward the games that deserve to be rewarded. If it doesn't change, that's fine, but I can't see the problem in trying to make things better.

Id love to hear more of the reasoning behind "We'll give Guitar Hero: World Tour 9th because even though Rock Band 2 has so many more better features and stuff and hasnt got an interface that makes you want to kill yourself, The guitar is better and Harmonix are C*nts".

Just for y'know. Science. (And maybe a flame war. For Science.)

Shouldn't Eurogamer have people on staff that like sports games and shooters? It seems like a lot of the staff are TOO similar with their taste in games and you are often left wondering if some games are given a fair shake in reviews or in lists.

I feel there is a lot of bias in Eurogamer towards the puzzle, platform, cutesy and novelty genres, which is pretty much a minority of the games that come out during the year and they usually sell next to F all.

Too many of the staff in that list seemed to confess a dislike for shooters... why not, I don't know, hire more shooter fans than yet another puzzle freak!

I also did find it confusing how VERY simple and identical concepts like Rock Band and Guitar Hero make it so high on the list when they changed nothing dramatic from previous versions. They are the same as the Fifa's and the Tiger Woods of the world, only they seem to get more recognition. Maybe the EA sports games would have fared better if they had a peripheral that the EG staff could look stupid on EGTV with.

The list wasn't broken - so don't fix it.
Anybody that could find anything in it to complain about is a moron. FACT!

I'm an adult that likes games, and want to read a well written web site (which Eurogamer is and has been for a long time).
I don't want to read a web site tailored to the childish - reactionary "fanboys".

I'm sure there is a larger, silent (intelligent) minority that was quite happy with the list, and was quite capable of understanding how it was compiled, and the reasons games ended in that order.

Don't let the vocal minority ruin it for us humans. That is all.