14 DAY TRIAL // A quick look at the major ratings sites and especially at Metacritic can show anyone that there are more high quality games launched in 2011 than in 2010 and with the increased competition between publishers and better tech available to developers the same will probably be true next year.
It's impossible for one gamer to play all the big titles of the fall and equally hard for a reviewer to rate them all in an objective manner.
So all Game of the Year lists, regardless of the origin, are blends of objective evaluation of games, subjective memories on the part of those who compile the lists and peer pressure coming from the larger industry.
We have decided to push this simple observation to its natural conclusion at the Games division of Softpedia and give me and my colleague Andrei Dobra the freedom to choose which categories we are most interested in and then pick a winner and a runner-up for them under the GOTY 2011 tag.
All decisions are based on what he played this year and what video game we would like to see our readers try out in the coming few months, when the pace of big releases slows down a little.
Sure, we have re-read our reviews, talked a little with one another and other video game playing friends but these are mainly our lists, an expression of our preferences, obsessions and love of gaming.
Our assumed subjectivity will mean that our lists will be dominated, perhaps unfairly at times, by The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Battlefield 3, because of the time we spent and continue to spend with them, but we’re sure to also serve up some controversial choices before the end of the year.
You can check out the GOTY articles we have put up so far and don’t forget to come back regularly in order to see what the most interesting games of the year are for each of us.