Adventure Gamers - Forums
You are here: Home → Forum Home → Gaming → Adventure → Thread
Post Marker Legend:
-
New posts -
No new posts
Currently online
Aggies 2014
We can’t say for sure that no one has voted more than once with multiple accounts, but we can track IPs, home country, etc. and there’s no mass voting scandal here. None. Let’s kill that rumour dead where it stands.
There are, however, a whole lot of very devoted Tex fans who turned out to vote. I won’t say more, as people have the right to total confidentiality, but there were a lot of submissions with essentially just one game on it.
Believe me, no one wants greater award diversity than me, but this is totally on the up-and-up. Whether it violates the spirit of the Aggies is another thing (that absolutely cannot be answered by anyone other than those who did the voting), but these are real people who turned out to show their love for Tex.
Funny thing is, though, that none of the awards individually feel tainted. Tesla Effect is indeed a flawed game, but frankly, every game this year was either flawed or at least significantly better in some areas than others (except the staff GOTY, of course, but that’s a secret until tomorrow. 
May even be Tex!) That left Tex enough room to place highly in all of them. When doing the write-ups for the reader awards, we try to make a case for each winner, and none of them really felt like too big a stretch.
On the bright side, Tex is guaranteed to lose at least two of the reader awards tomorrow!
its fishy Jackal , admit it!
No, it’s not fishy. A beloved franchise returns from the dead after 16 years as a result of massive community support, then turns out to be one of the better games of the year in most categories by any reasonable measure, and the same community turned out in droves to vote for it.
Now, am I saying that Tex fans weren’t privately encouraging each other to vote? No. And nor would I, because that’s not against any rules.
I don’t really see anything suspicious about this!
Yes one game getting more than half of the reader Aggies, does somewhat diminish the whole purpose of having awards in many different categories. But I simply think that it is a case of fans voting for their favourite game in pretty much all the categories, instead of spreading it out a bit more, and ask if Tesla Effect truly has the best story etc. or perhaps some other game is slightly better in this category, even though Tesla is their favourite game of 2014.
And it is not like it is completely unjustified that it won in the categories that it did, Tesla does have a good story, it does have a great soundtrack, Tex is a great character etc.
Besides it is not the first time this is happening!
Remember the Aggies of 2012?
Where The Walking Dead won an obscenely large amount of the reader Aggies?
9 out of 17 or 53% to be precise, including the GOTY Aggie.
Was that also because of vote fishing or other suspicious things?
This time it is at least happening to a much better game (imo).
Personally I’m more in agreement with the staff choices, especially Blackwell Epiphany as best Story, and I really hope that it also gets the staffs goty.
You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ
These are just opinions, so nothing to get worked up about. I don’t agree with many of them either. In fact, I can’t even get through 5 minutes of Tex Murphy as it reeks of pure cheese. But hey ho each to their own.
Recently completed: Game of Thrones (decent), Tales from the borderlands (great!), Life is Strange (great!), Stasis (good), Annas Quest (great!); Broken Age (poor)
They did the same thing they tried to do with the (rather unimportant) tournament, but got busted and failed miserably! But now they got smarter and did everything “undercover”, without any public posting or similar, and Jackal’s: “there were a lot of submissions with essentially just one game on it” says all.
It’s really disgusting…
They did the same thing they tried to do with the tournament, but got busted and failed miserably!
Who are “they”?
People like Bobby James worked extremely hard to deliver a phenomenal soundtrack which included live musicians and multiple genres
Agreed. I don’t think anyone would argue with Tex winning best music. But all the other biggies? And to be honest, Jackal’s pretty much confirmed things by saying an awful lot of votes were ONLY for Tex. That’s something few general adventure players are likely to do. Mainly? Ok. Only? No.
They did the same thing they tried to do with the (rather unimportant) tournament, but got busted and failed miserably!
Who are “they”?
Those organized fedora lovers! 
They did the same thing they tried to do with the (rather unimportant) tournament, but got busted and failed miserably! But now they got smarter and did everything “undercover”, without any public posting or similar, and Jackal’s: “there were a lot of submissions with essentially just one game on it” says all.
It’s really disgusting…
It doesn’t say anything more than that a lot of people really love Tex Murphy (and Tesla Effect). Period.
Who cares if they encouraged each other to vote? (If in fact they did, and even that is pure speculation.) The more the merrier! That’s the whole point of having the poll.
The only—repeat, ONLY—way this is in any way a disservice to the Aggies is if they disingenuously voted for Tex in categories they felt the game didn’t really deserve to win. And none of us could possibly know that.
The fact is, the reader Aggies have always, and will always be popularity contests. There’s just no way around it. In ‘12 it was Walking Dead, in ‘13 it was Cognition. This year it’s Tex. It just did better than the others (or perhaps the competing field was weaker.)
Besides it is not the first time this is happening!
Remember the Aggies of 2012?
Where The Walking Dead won an obscenely large amount of the reader Aggies?
9 out of 17 or 53% to be precise, including the GOTY Aggie.
Was that also because of vote fishing or other suspicious things?
This time it is at least happening to a much better game (imo).
The only difference is that The Walking Dead was deserving of those awards. You might not like it, but myself and tons of other people think it is one of the best adventures in the modern age.
I do agree that it looks fishy, but I really don’t think that Chris Jones and Big Finish Games actively organised people to “hijack” the voting for the Aggies.
Tex Murphy fans are a very over-enthusiastic bunch (especially after the 15 year hiatus) and like to show that - and it may very well be that they posted about this tournament on other sites to attracte votes (I saw that someone posted about it on the Steam Community Forums). However, I do believe that those people who came to the Aggies and voted for Tesla Effect are indeed fans of Tex Murphy and the game, and not some “bots” or hired voters.
So the question is really who is “allowed” or “welcome to vote at the Aggies: Only Adventure Gamers veterans or every fan of a game who may have never heard of the Aggies and AGs before?
If the AG staff wanted the voting to be more inclusive, they could have made a restriction that you have to be locked in to your account to vote, but it seems that they don’t want that.
The only difference is that The Walking Dead was deserving of those awards.
Well, next year we should make the SoccerDude28-Awards instead of the Aggie-Awards to make definitely sure only the right games win.
Well, next year we should make the SoccerDude28-Awards instead of the Aggie-Awards to make definitely sure only the right games win.
It’s just not only me saying it, most of the critics loved it.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-walking-dead-a-telltale-games-series/critic-reviews
And it was game of the year on multiple websites, including this one.
Well, next year we should make the SoccerDude28-Awards instead of the Aggie-Awards to make definitely sure only the right games win.
It’s just not only me saying it, most of the critics loved it.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-walking-dead-a-telltale-games-series/critic-reviewsAnd it was game of the year on multiple websites, including this one.
Sure, the general gaming community loved it for an *adventure* game (more like interactive story, some adventureing). It was a new type of game for lots of people and they were blow away by it, I was not, but many were. Metacritic is not a great place to look at scores for all adventure games as they do not cater to them like this site does, its great for a general audience but not uber adventure nerds like the folks who flock to this site, like myself. I personally played half of season one and never played it again due to being sick to death of anything to do with zombies. I dug it in the 80’s and am entirely sick of it at this point. I don’t care how great the game is if its about the end times and zombies count my shit out, sick to death of zombies, they are SO overdone.
I know this may razz some of you but its just my opinion, also being a big horror nerd its double overkill.. give me anything BUT zombies. bue eh, that’s just me. Telltale made a game to cater to everyone and boy did it, they are doing great now with tons of very similar games coming out. The “tell-tale” game could be a sub genera of adventure gaming in the future, very formulaic to sell to a general audience which is FINE but that is what it is, they make a great predictable product at this point which works , they have a great team, very good interactive storytelling.
On that note I am not surprised at all that TEX won , when you look at the percent of people who liked it (users) on metacritic against those who do not like it 81% end up liking it and only 82% end up liking walking dead season one, pretty damn close. More people played walking dead but percent wise its pretty much exactly the same. Tex has a huge cult following in the adventure gaming community for a couple decades now and this is the *core* site catering to those folks. People have wanted to see Tex back for a long time now. If Ron Gilbert made MI 3 this year I am sure that would win this award for similar reasons alone even if it (somehow) was a sub par game. Fans voting for what fans want.
I still have not played Tex yet but am sure its a good game. Maybe the entire gaming world won’t think so but point n click geeks loved it and that shows all over every site that talked about it. Blackwell is similar and has a 83 on metacritic which is impressive for an old school adventure game. So all these games are good but why should walking dead be the best if people voted otherwise? Anyways, I am enjoying the results so far and have found a few titles I need to pick up! Thanks again AG , I love this site and lurk way more then post but think I made up for not posting with the ridicules length of this post.
People like Bobby James worked extremely hard to deliver a phenomenal soundtrack which included live musicians and multiple genres
Agreed. I don’t think anyone would argue with Tex winning best music. But all the other biggies? And to be honest, Jackal’s pretty much confirmed things by saying an awful lot of votes were ONLY for Tex. That’s something few general adventure players are likely to do. Mainly? Ok. Only? No.
That’s fair enough… I personally do not condone anybody who chose to just “flood” the votes with one game. I can understand that as being very one-eyed. But Jackal did not indicate how many people may have done this with other titles too. But with some people pointing the fingers squarely at a game’s community based on nothing more than a “hunch” (despite being told otherwise by Jackal) and using words like “disgusting” is very disrespectful. But let’s explore this hunch anyway…
I saw what happened with the community tournament. I also saw that user immediately returned to the forum topic he started, apologized and encouraged people not to break the rules literally hours later. And that topic on the forum was one of the lowest viewed topics anyway, with only one response from a person saying “I can’t be bothered voting”!! It was a one-off mistake, which was corrected and now being used as “definitive proof” that an entire game’s community is a handful of corrupt goblins devoid of any morals (/hyperbole).
Let’s also debunk another hunch…
Saying: “they did not do well compared to the other titles on the user tournament, which means it should not do well in the Aggies” is a flawed claim because if Grim Fandango or DOTT was a contender in this years Aggies nobody else would stand a chance there either! LOL Not to mention it was all about Pandora and not Tesla.
I agree, the game had its flaws… but lets look at it this way: For a moment we will entertain the fact that it won so many reader’s choice as a result of either a) a strong, large and very active community base, or b) It was just the more popular title on the list compared to the others. If either of these are the case, they are case for good reason: Tesla Effect continued a well established brand built on a solid reputation from a dedicated company devoted to making great adventure titles. The next chapter may not have been the best in the series (or the best game by many opinions), but it was delivered against all odds, and continued a long standing tradition in the Adventure Gaming genre.
You are here: Home → Forum Home → Gaming → Adventure → Thread
