vote for the greatest games of all time (poll #2 3/20/11)

[geozeldadude]

i'm a big list nerd, and i've spent way too much time reading through lists of "top 100 greatest games of all time". the problem with these is that they're often so unprincipled, just relying on the opinions of a few editors, and they're usually repetitive and focus on the same games over and over. i thought it would be interesting to see what the racketboy community would come up with.

i've modified the following approach from another site, that hopefully balances things so we're not just voting for the obvious games all the time. here's how it works: each week you'll be presented with a list of 10 options, and you get to pick 3. the top 5 will continue to the next round, and the bottom 5 will be replaced. any game that has been in the top 5 for 3 weeks gets retired and put in our collective "greatest games of all time" pool. at some point i may have the hall-of-famers face off against each other, but that's not the main focus of this series.

the list of games will initially be made up of all the ones included in IGN's editors and readers polls (http://sunday-in-the-park.com/fc/images ... lists.html). this should take quite a while to work through, but it will give us a pretty good starting point and may encourage some of us to play through games we've had lying around.

some more details and guidelines: in the case of sequels, only one will be listed at a time so that sequels aren't directly competing against each other. also, please don't vote for a game you haven't played. also, feel free to suggest other games to add in once we get past a letter (i.e. since we're going alphabetically, once we've gotten through IGN's "A" games you can suggest a game that starts with "A" to me that wasn't on any of their lists, especially if they were released in the last few years as IGN's lists only go up to 2007).

happy voting! we'll have to see how this goes. also, of course, discussion is encouraged.

[CRTGAMER]

the problem with these is that they're often so unprincipled, just relying on the opinions of a few editors, and they're usually repetitive and focus on the same games over and over.

THIS. There are too many great games to narrow it down to a top whatever list. Everyone has their own favorites.

[Croooow!]

So will this all stay in one thread or will it result in dozens of threads?

[geozeldadude]

i'm planning on keeping it in one thread.

[Gnashvar]

I don't think it's going to take very long. You could probably post the new poll more often.

[geozeldadude]

I don't think it's going to take very long. You could probably post the new poll more often.

i'm open to tweaking things, based on the response or lack of response.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

The only game on that so far that would even be in my top 100 of all time is Age Of Empires 2.

[geozeldadude]

The only game on that so far that would even be in my top 100 of all time is Age Of Empires 2.

haha, yeah, that's another thing i realized. the alphabetical approach isn't really going to work, b/c of the sequels problem and also b/c there would be some polls where there would be way too many top-tier games, e.g. in the S's. so i'll try to mix things up a bit to make it a better balance of top-tier and lesser-known games.

[J T]

This is an interesting approach to generating a top ten list. I wonder if it will still end up with some of the usual top ten items- they are widely played and well balanced games. I really like a lot of games for excelling in one area such as gameplay, story, or graphics and I feel they unfortunately get left out of these lists, but when I think about it, I wouldn't rank them as top ten material either.

[geozeldadude]

one of the things i like about this approach is that it de-emphasizes the ordering. we all pretty much know what games are always in the "top 10" of these types of lists, but this way there's a fair amount of wiggle room so lesser-known greats can still make it into the pantheon. i'll probably also add a "superstar" rule where if a game gets a huge percentage of the votes it automatically gets retired and put into the master greatest games list without having to survive for four weeks or whatever.