Destiny Takes GOTY, Confuses Audience, at This Year's BAFTAs

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

You know how sometimesa director, actor, actress or whatever gets awarded an Oscar based more so on what they achieved during their entire career than the merit of their work in the film they are nominated for? Usually preluded by film critics saying "person X's Oscar win has been long overdue" or something along those lines?

Maybe this is the video game equivalent for Bungie.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

So.. the games industry awards just went the way of Oscars, Emmys and Grammies.

Being a totally useless circle jerk without any merit. Great.

 

[Akjosch]

A DLC winning the "best story game" award. They clearly aren't unaware that The Vanishing of Ethan Carter exists, so what the hell? Also: South Park: The Stick of Truth - how the hell did that not win anything?

League of Legends is a "persistent game"? I have no idea what criteria they applied to come to that conclusion, because whatever I can think of would also make Chess into one.

The less is said about their "GOTY" choice the better ...

 

[Briantb]

A bit surprising it really wasn't that good of a game

 

[Tsaba]

Well, from the looks of things, I believe everyone's general feelings on BAFTA giving Destiny GOTY can be summed up as.....

 

[kouriichi]

I can understand it. I wont say Destiny is the most amazing game ever (if i didnt get it for free with my PS4, i wouldnt have gotten it at all), but its certainly far better than i was expecting. I'm in no way a Halo fanboy, or a Bungie fan in general (havent enjoyed one since halo 2), but Destiny is a pretty good game. Looks great on the PS4, plays pretty well, the multiplayer is fun and slightly more diverse than i was expecting. Its a solid title that I think wins it fairly. From the 12+ hours i've put in, i've enjoyed them all without more than a single error (the marionberry error, which was sorted with a quick router reset).

While I do think there were better candidates (Monster Hunter, Binding of Issac, Huniepop), its a fair win in its own right.

 

[Asclepion]

This is literally some of the worst dialogue I have ever seen.

 

[MCerberus]

Now people know how I felt when Bioshock Infinite won its awards...

That and MW2 I guess.

It's popular to hate on Infinite, and it does have its flaws (which have been stated. to death), but to put it on the MW2 level of buyoff for awards is a little... hate for its own sake. Remember that the atmosphere and gameplay work really well when they work, which is most of the time, and the game actually tried in narrative and thematic ways that weren't pandering or facetious. I can understand not liking it, if the people that don't like it can understand it winning awards.

Hell people don't seem to mind when less mechanically proficient games like The Line, TLoU, or the Telltale games win... or when worse story wrappers for similar levels of fun win (new Tomb Raider, Uncharted). It just seems fashionable to hate on Infinite in ways CoD DESERVES.


OT: No, the game falls flat on its face in too many design places, and while the shooting is fun, they didn't try anything unique with it. I still play it occasionally, but you can practically see the arrogance in the textures and hear it in every line of dialog if you weren't too busy laughing.

 

[Jandau]

....god damn you Brits must have some really awesome mind-altering substances.

this, Far Cry 4 was the actual game of the year. Destiny just sounds to me like Borderlands so I've already done it.

So, you dismiss Destiny because it's too much like Borderlands, but then praise Far Cry 4, which is basically copy/pasted Far Cry 3? Riiiiiight...

Hey, at least Far Cry 4 is part of a series, so it's not too unheard of to have the games be similar. And it's not like the gameplay in far cry 3/4 gets repetitive nearly as fast as Destiny.

Destiny on the other hand, it's just a boring, beautiful skybox filled with the same 7 enemies, full of pointless weapon/gear drops, literally no story, and some of the most drab, uninteresting writing I've heard since Ride to Hell.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not praising Destiny. Hell, I couldn't give two shits about it, as I game on a PC and Destiny hasn't had a PC release. Just pointing out that the argument is silly, regardless of FC being a series. And Far Cry 4 got old before it came out. It got old halfway through Far Cry 3...

 

[slacker2]

One of the commenters on the main article page makes an especially good point: How does a MULTIPLAYER game win GOTY but does not also win the best multiplayer game of the year award? If it wasn't awarded GOTY for pretty much the only thing it does, then what was it given the award for?

 

[Zhit]

Next year that folks at BAFTA need to make sure they label the envelopes. What happened was all the winning envelopes got mixed together early in the show. Folks had no idea what was going on is the only explanation.

 

[Rawbeard]

Now we know where Destiny's budget went to. A bit obvious, though.

 

[hermes]

The BAFTAs have always been fairly embarrassing when it comes to Games.
Lest we forget, they gave a Lifetime Acheivement award to Peter Fucking Molyneux.

The guy worked on Populous, Syndicate, Dungeon Keeper (the good one) and Fables. The guy is a public face, one of the historical faces of games design (together with Wright and Miyamoto), and proponent of gamesjams. He sure seem a lot better candidate for a lifetime award thanDavid Braben (creator of Kinectimals) and Rockstar Games...



OT: That is pretty messed up. I always thought BAFTA was less restricted by commercial or political concerns than other awards, so I don't think Activision would pay its way into it.

Even the people that I know that enjoyed Destiny are apologetic, and feel the need to justify it before. I would have been better served with Dragon Age, and I don't even like Dragon Age...

 

[Scarim Coral]

I still confuse why Monument Valley was in it since didn't it came out a year ago?

 

[hermes]

My, my, the reasons behind giving this game an award can be seen a mile away...

By the way aren't the BAFTA awards the ones sponsored by PR or am I getting cross-eyed with ANOTHER british game award show?

Shit, someone just asked me what I was laughing at xD

This graphic is absolutely immense and sums up the problem with how EA approaches marketing and its consumer base. Hit or miss, polished but unimaginative products overhyped by any means neccessary.

You two may want to reconsider your stand.

Not going to defend EA from many things, but Destiny was published by [/b]Activision[/b], after they bought Bungie. At least give credit to the proper evil overlord...

 

[Davroth]

My, my, the reasons behind giving this game an award can be seen a mile away...

By the way aren't the BAFTA awards the ones sponsored by PR or am I getting cross-eyed with ANOTHER british game award show?

Shit, someone just asked me what I was laughing at xD

This graphic is absolutely immense and sums up the problem with how EA approaches marketing and its consumer base. Hit or miss, polished but unimaginative products overhyped by any means neccessary.

You two may want to reconsider your stand.

Not going to defend EA from many things, but Destiny was published by Activision, after they bought Bungie. At least give credit to the proper evil overlord...

So? It's a prevalent problem in all of the industry, and this is merely a callback to another big corporation flexing their financial muscles to buy positive coverage. It's just not surprising anymore at this point. I didn't think it was anyway.

That gif is still hilarious though.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

At least Alien: Isolation didn't win.

...say what you want about Destiny, at least it wasn't boring and dull as dirt. It is a good shooter, even if the MMO bullshit grates the game down from being anything above good.

That said, it is weird that it got Game of the Year. I'd say it didn't do enough to get that title, but at the same time, I can't think of anything last year that really deserved GOTY. Maybe 2014 should just got GOTY-less.