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

[Ishigami]

Well that is one shitty decision.
I mean Destiny has very good gun feel, high production values (graphics fidelity) and nice music but that?s it and it is not even remotely enough to make it a very good game.
It is decent, it is not bad. But with the utter lack of story, characters, social features, odd RNG implementation, restrictive progression system etc. etc. it can?t be good enough for a GOTY award unless you have really shitty taste.
If anything Destiny should be awarded the ?everything that?s wrong with today?s videogames? award? but even then Order 1886 is pretty hard competition for that.

 

[Garlador]

I can only conclude that the Wii U doesn't exist in Europe...

Seriously, has this game won ANY awards? It's one of the greatest, purest gaming experiences in years and I feel like because it's both Japanese and on the Wii U, that somehow invalidates it from winning anything.

 

[LaoJim]

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...

Wait, David Braben created Kinectimals...checks Wikipedia...ok, mind blown.

David Braben: Who also created the concept of open world games, procedural creation and pioneered the entire space sim genre. David Braben who worked on the cheap and affordable educational tool known as the Raspberry Pi, which many use as an emulation machine to relive games of the past and help make the barrier to entry for future coders (But why would the vidja garm industry need those... Ubisoft doesn't seem to. AMIRITE?). Lest we also forget Frontier Development also worked on the zenith of a game that was RCT3 which still has an active modding community and player base to this day.

You take jobs like Kinectimals and Disney Land Kinect Adventure to pay the bills so you can make RCT3 and Elite: Dangerous.

Whatever you think of his past works, what he has done for the Video Games industry is truly remarkable. That is why he was awarded a fellowship.

Agree with all this absolutely, Elite on its own would be enough for DB to get the lifetime achievement award, but its worth pointing out that there's nothing wrong with Kinectimals (haven't played/seen Disneyland). It's a lovingly crafted quality children's game of the kind we rarely get these days. Its not particularly deep and it has a lot of the problems common to Kinect (and especially early Kinect) games, but its certainly not a blot on anyone's CV.

Peter Molyneux is like the Paul McCartney of video games, it doesn't matter how terrible his latest album is, he's still Paul McCartney. Frankly both him and David Braben deserve the award; lifetime achievement awards are always bizarre like this; if you institute a new award for say Rock music in 2015 who do you give it to first - the Beatles or the Rolling Stones and then after ten years you realize that Led Zepplin are still waiting for one...

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Like we needed more proof the standards have tunnelled right through the bottom of the barrel at this point.

Fuck Destiny, fuck BAFTA for taking bribes (it's so obvious) etc etc.

 

[Skeleon]

Gotta keep the Bungie-hype going somehow, I suppose... Halo! Halo! Ha-... I mean... Destiny! Destiny!

 

[Ragnar47183]

Game of the year? You mean of 2014? Do they know its March now?

Maybe they can use that Bungie money to buy a calendar?

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Lets say that the experience I got as a fan of games of the same type as Infinite (Metro, Half Life, RTCW and TNO), my love for games Infinite tried to emulate a bit and failed (Serious Same, Painkiller) the things I saw on E3s and the INCREDIBLE potential at display there, the interest I have in American Exceptionalism ans certain themes and Science Fiction...
Infinite annoyed me on all these fronts. And then it gets GOTY awards... and Metro which I had SKY HIGH expectations for (it managed to actually EXCEED them)... did not.

I am uncertain of which Metro is the one you speak; Metro 2033 is fantastic! On ranger mode, it has to be my favourite FPS survival experience so far. But Infinite left me meloncholy, and thinking. Which is more than i can say for Metro. (Pointless opinion for the archives )

Metro Last Light as it came out in the same year as Infinite and was much better in both gameplay and story.

Meh, I played Metro and was satisfied. I played Infinite and was dissapoint and mad. It could have been so much better or more impacting... yet it turned into nothing worthy of thought.

Is it too late to reply on here? Oh well, doing it anyway!
To be fair, I have yet to complete Last Light, so i cannot judge the story as a whole yet. It autosaved me in the middle of a horrendous ambush, where i can hear them all shooting at me before the loading screen even disappears. On Ranger mode too. I must keep at it though. 2033 also had some awkward autosaves where it would do so as youre on your last filter during a surface run that would last longer than it's willing to supply you for. Ive had to restart earlier chapters a few times for that reason. Still love it though! Which must be something.
Though they didnt make a HUDless ranger mode for last light. I did not realise how great that was till they took it away. Now it just looks like a dirty, HUD-ridden common FPS!

 

[StreamerDarkly]

in fact, go back in time and look at everything that they promised Destiny would be, and then look at what we got. it's bland, it's boring, and most importantly, it's not the game they promised us.

There's an interesting question here about whether it's 'fair' to consider broken promises or outrageous hype when it comes to analyzing video game quality. Shouldn't you just look at the actual game in front of you and ignore extraneous factors? Consider also how the previous installments of a franchise have a big influence on how the newest installment is viewed.

And I don't just mean review scores - award shows judges are tasked with weighing games against one another and determining which is better. Of course it's unavoidable that game consumers will be put off by basically being lied to if the final product isn't what was promised. Should reviewers and judges be trying to ignore all this 'baggage'?

 

[Roboshi]

You have to think of the BAFTAs as like the oscars, it's not about being the best, it's about being the most well known or about having the better first impression. You think those judges played for 50 hours each game to see how the whole game pans out?

 

[Atmos Duality]

Ayup. Utter mediocrity-at-best takes the Gold, and some people act rightly confused.
That about sums up the pathetic state of the gaming industry nicely, I think.

Y'know, I occasionally see someone claim "Gaming is better than it has ever been" like it's incontrovertible fact...
...and then something like THIS happens.

So as far as I'm concerned, the only "incontrovertible fact" here is that those people have extremely low standards, to put it politely.

Lets not kid ourselves: Destiny isn't GOTY material. It's just Halo with grind. Oh boy.
If that's the best 2014 had to offer, I weep for the future of gaming, because that's a new low.

One could say the BAFTAs were already a joke, but that's kinda my point: our industry accolades and celebrations in gaming are *utterly meaningless* because they're either the products of bribes and low "by-the-book" standards.

If you want to promote great games, or at least games that aren't just some burnt-out AAA developer's design-by-decree-of-management checklist then maybe we should start pretending like we give half a damn ourselves.

At least the fact that many in the audience were (rightly) confused, is a sliver of hope.
Standards haven't bottomed out entirely yet.

At least Alien: Isolation didn't win.

...say what you want about Destiny, at least it wasn't boring and dull as dirt.

I found Destiny to be EXACTLY that: boring and dull as dirt for every minute I played, which mercifully wasn't long.
(friend rented it for kicks; he has good internet, unlike me)

It has nice graphics, and that's the best thing I can say about it.

 

[Saviordd1]

Still more deserved than Dragon Age Inquisition winning the GOTY at the Video Game Awards.

So BAFTA > VGAs

Dear god no. A half baked MMO (A bad half baked MMO at that) does not deserve an award more than a 25 hours plus RPG.

 

[Edl01]

To me it looks like they just took a look at the best selling games of this year and gave them awards. The BAFTA's aren't about video games and I don't feel like we should expect the coverage of an award show mainly based around movies to actually be any good.
I guess the coverage of this comes from the fact so many people seem to want games to get the same recognition that films and television get, so they put a lot of weight on the what games the a large event like the BAFTA's give awards to. However in my opinion who BAFTA's grant the awards to doesn't matter, because most people don't watch the BAFTA's for the video games(stereotyping a bit here) so it's unlikely that they put much effort into actually choosing the winners.

In this situation we should look at what awards were given by our own media, who are all likely much more qualified to decide what the best games are than the BAFTA committee.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

in fact, go back in time and look at everything that they promised Destiny would be, and then look at what we got. it's bland, it's boring, and most importantly, it's not the game they promised us.

There's an interesting question here about whether it's 'fair' to consider broken promises or outrageous hype when it comes to analyzing video game quality. Shouldn't you just look at the actual game in front of you and ignore extraneous factors? Consider also how the previous installments of a franchise have a big influence on how the newest installment is viewed.

And I don't just mean review scores - award shows judges are tasked with weighing games against one another and determining which is better. Of course it's unavoidable that game consumers will be put off by basically being lied to if the final product isn't what was promised. Should reviewers and judges be trying to ignore all this 'baggage'?

okay, ignore all the baggage, this award is for artistic achievement, yes? british academy of film and television arts. what merit did destiny have to win based on it's art? when it comes to the art of well executed code and graphical trickery, destiny falls flat, when it comes to the art of game design, destiny falls flat and feels more like an abomination of all these pieces of successful games jammed together into a barely functioning middling shooter. as someone else said above, the only accomplishment destiny can claim to have is in it's Sound department, and it didn't even win that single category. plus, on that note, fuck bungie and destiny anyways for screwing over their super-talented music lead, and then commissioning that god awful paul mccartney song. and fuck them both for managing to squeeze a god awful performance out of Peter Dinklage.

 

[Mr C]

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

Indeed, Alien Isolation so deserved it. The game was made in England too, if ever I would accept bias, this was it.

 

[4Aces]

Alien: Isolation was classified as horror, yet did not induce any actual horror. It relied on jump scares alone. Couple that with the laughable mechanic of an invulnerable Alien, to weapons that killed them in every other game/movie, and you can see why it did not win on Notstalgia alone. Pretty graphics are just the minimum standard these days.

Destiny just proves that Bafta is for sale. Next year it will be The Order's turn, or perhaps they are going for an Oscar?

 

[Trippy Turtle]

Eh. I'm just happy Alien Isolation didn't get even more overrated than it currently is.
I'm surprised Shadow of Mordor didn't win, but Destiny isn't honestly a bad choice. Not as if much else good came out.

 

[Loop Stricken]

"British game"? That seems so deafeatist. "We know nothing made in Britain is gonna get on the list, so let's just make sure we get *something*.

What, you mean like GTA, made up in Scotland?

 

[mrdude2010]

That makes no sense at all. Destiny wasn't even that good.

 

[IamGamer41]

They must of had even more advertisements thrown in their face about Destiny then the US did. Its obvious they didn't play it for any period of time or they would have know better.

 

[balladbird]

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...

Far Cry 4 was Ubisoft counting on being able to make me like a game by simply changing how long the charismatic villain was in it.

and Ubisoft was right. XD


as to Destiny being GOTY? Eh, not my choice, but if they came to the conclusion without putting on a few pounds (never thought I'd ever get to break out a british currency joke! bucket list one step closer to done) then they can name what they will, I guess.